Liquid Sunshine
by adoranymph
Summary: He knew he was gonna need her. But she was starting to more than grow on him. And she was starting to more than understand him better than anyone ever had before. With each day they worked together and grew closer, they were realizing that since they had first met, they had each found the sunshine they didn't know they'd been looking for. Gruvia. One Year Time-Skip/Avatar Arc.
1. Just For Now

**Chapter One**

 **Just For Now**

 _It had been a long 13 hours of labor, but at long last, Mika Fullbuster was able to give one last push right before the wail of a newborn baby, after which she collapsed back against the pillows behind her with relief, her white blonde hair plastered across her sweaty brow._

 _"_ _It's over…it's over, Mika, you did it." Her husband Silver squeezed her hand in both of his, even though she'd just been painfully crushing his hand in hers a moment before. He was positively beaming, and Mika managed to catch some of his encouraging enthusiasm and smile back at him, despite her exhaustion, softening her otherwise ragged look._

 _"_ _Did I really, darling?" she murmured._

 _"_ _Oh you bet." Silver kissed her knuckles, and got himself lost in her eyes for a moment._

 _"_ _Congratulations, Mr. and Mrs. Fullbuster, it's a boy!" cried the midwife, breaking Silver and Mika out of their being transfixed by each other's loving gazes._

 _Both their jaws went slack as the midwife presented them with a freshly cleaned, wrinkly, wriggling, crying little baby wrapped up in a warm white towel._

 _Mika reached for the newborn with such eagerness, it was as if the very sight of him had reinvigorated her, all traces of fatigue smoothed away._

 _"_ _Oh, let me see him!" she gushed, glowing as the whimpering newborn was placed into her arms. "Oh, look at him…he's adorable…." And before she knew it she was crying. "He's perfect." She lifted her sparkling eyes up to her husband, blinking rapidly. "Silver, isn't he perfect?"_

 _Silver peered over to have himself a first real look at his firstborn child._

 _The baby had stopped crying somewhat now that the shock of being born had worn off and he'd been settled in his mother's arms. He had hair as dark as his father's, and his eyes too were just as dark. But there was a softness to him, in his face, that was more like his mother Mika. He couldn't quite explain it._

 _Silver smiled, his eyes prickling. "Yeah…he's perfect."_

 _"_ _Would you like to hold him?" his wife asked, her face still brightly flushed._

 _Silver was slightly taken aback, no less a little nervous. Not that he wanted Mika to know that last part. "Um…well, you haven't gotten to hold him all that long and…uh, well he was just born and…."_

 _"_ _Oh I plan to steal him back from you rather quickly."_

 _Mika winked at him which made him laugh and actually relax a little too._

 _"_ _All right then."_

 _And he tentatively held out his arms for his son. Actually, as he cradled the baby against his chest, after the baby gave only a moment of grunting protestation at being given away by his mother, it really hit Silver, the weight of what it meant that this child was his son. There was so much potential in this small life, so many things this boy could grow up to be, and just thinking about it was more than enough to fill Silver with pride and joy. And he knew Mika felt the same, the way she was regarding them now._

 _And he wanted to be there, to see that day when his son would do amazing things. Although he was someone who'd only dabbled in magic of the ice variety for fun—after all, it was common up in the north to have a recreational interest in the stuff—he found himself hoping just a little that maybe, if his son learned a skill like that, that he'd really make something great from it. If he wanted to, of course._

 _A soft smile settled on Silver's face, as he impulsively reached over and affectionately stroked back his son's dark hair. Then he looked at Mika again. "We still haven't thought of a name," he reminded her, raising his eyebrows, still smiling._

 _"_ _Hm…you're right." Mika furrowed her brow for a moment, glancing once out of the window of their little bedroom in their little house kept cozy warm inside even now in the deepest depths of iciest winter. Her eyes brushed over the gray opaque of the sky, and then she turned back to her husband. "What about…Gray?"_

 _Silver cocked his head to one side. "Gray? Why Gray?" Then, after a thought, he added, "Because my name's Silver? I swear, Mika, you and your puns and in-jokes…."_

 _But then he took note of the way Mika looked at him now with her big doe eyes, in that smug way of hers that really melted Silver if he was being honest._

 _"_ _Mmmm, maybe that's part of it, but…it just feels right." And then she nodded her smile towards the window before she looked at him again. "I love this shade of gray in the sky, it's so peaceful. It's the kind of gray that doesn't make you feel gloomy, it makes you feel content with the world."_

 _"_ _Hm." Silver considered this and then considered the baby boy in his arms. The newborn was kind of glowering up at him, but that could've been just a result of how wrinkly he was in the face and the fact that he knew nothing of how to express himself with things like smiles._

 _He would learn though. Because above all else, Silver just wanted his son to be happy. And thinking of the name Gray for him, he felt a warmth inside of his chest._

 _"_ _Well then," he said again, beaming lovingly at his wife, "Gray it is."_

* * *

Years later, and that boy named Gray had indeed grown into a young man, who had since lost his parents back when he was still a small boy—his father in fact, he'd had to lose twice due to some from very sinister circumstances involving resurrection at the hands of an eveil demon necromancer. And though his father had been suffering for it, Gray hadn't been able to bring himself to do right by him as his son and give him the peaceful death he longed for so he could be reunited with his mother.

Though that didn't make it any harder to let go as Silver had held his son in his arms one last time—at least, for everything he'd been through, he had gotten to see a little of how his son had grown after all.

Fortunately too, Gray hadn't been alone in that fight like he'd thought. Someone had been there to do what he couldn't do, and when he'd learned of what she'd done…he knew for certain that for what he had to do now, he would need her with him.

That and, he felt better having her with him.

Having woken in the middle of the night, she was the first thing that came to mind after a black and dreamless sleep. Lying awake in the dark, moonlight flooding through his bedroom window, he thought of her, and then he thought of his father again, his chest flooding with an aching warmth.

"Dad," he whispered. "I promise…I'm gonna get E.N.D….pick up where you left off…and make him pay for everything his demons did to you and Mom…."

Then his thoughts were interrupted, his ears pricking up at the clinks and clatter of someone moving around in the kitchen below, followed by the whistle of a kettle going off. He smiled just a little before he got out of bed and went downstairs to join them, totally unconcerned that he had nothing on except his boxers.

"Hey," he said, poking his head in the kitchen.

His housemate and partner in both training and in the fight he had ahead of him, Juvia Lockser, had her back to him at the moment, but she paused and then turned at the sound of his voice. And then she smiled at him the way she always smiled at him.

"Hey," she said, and then started to pour boiling water from a kettle into a mug.

"You makin' tea?" Gray asked, coming over and peering around.

"Mm-hm. Chamomile." Juvia pulled the open tin toward her. "I couldn't sleep." Then she gave him an inquisitive look. "Did you want some too?"

"Yeah. I can't seem to sleep either."

"Hm. Figured as much."

So instead of shutting the tin, she took out another bag and dropped it in another mug. She handed it to him after she poured hot water into that one.

Gray cupped it in both his hands. "Thanks."

"No problem." Juvia put the tin of chamomile away and picked up her own mug. "But you gotta let that steep for a couple minutes," she added, in a warning, almost scolding tone just as Gray was about to try to cool it down faster by flicking an ice cube into it. "It won't diffuse into the water as well if you try to make it cold. Anyway, that water's too hot for ice to last very long," she added with a smirk.

"Oh I see." But Gray smirked right back.

Then he looked at her, the way she had her mug cupped in her own hands, the way she had her blue hair tied up in a kind of sideways ponytail, and the way she wore her tank top and sleep shorts. He liked it when he could steal looks at her like this, and then turn away just when she'd notice his eyes on her, like he did now.

Still, he also took note of her cheeks coloring as she acted with a demureness she'd been hiding from him before they'd started living together like this. Not that he was complaining, he really liked this side of her. He'd been ruminating on how he had to admit to himself that he found her rather cute in her own strange way, especially after that day she'd made him that scarf (which now hung on a hook by the door, even though winter was still a ways away, and the cold didn't bother him, being an ice wizard), but seeing that she could be like this made his being with her this way all the more pleasing.

He nodded to the kitchen window, where they could see the full moon luminous in the sky. "Wanna step out?"

After all, this was probably one of the last nights it was going to feel this comfortably warm before autumn started to set in.

"Sure," said Juvia amiably, and the two of them took their tea and sat together out on the steps in front of the house they'd take up residence in just a week ago, on the edge of Amefurashi Village—a curiously named hamlet as it hardly ever did anything like rain around here. Just enough to keep the forests green and healthy, anyway. But apparently long ago it used to rain nearly all the time, so that was probably where it's name came from.

Rain though wasn't anything like an issue for Gray and Juvia. Especially Juvia, being a water mage and someone who used to be followed by rain all the time. Was in fact even stronger when it rained.

"So what do you think? You gonna be able to handle training when it starts snowing?" Gray asked Juvia, and he was actually half teasing her.

"Ah, well, I suppose it'll be fine." Juvia gave a weird kind of nervous giggle. "I mean…it's not like _I_ strip too."

"That doesn't make any difference for me," said Gray with a shrug, taking a sip of tea. "I spent years training in the snow with Ur wearing nothing but my underwear. It's only you that's gonna be cold if you strip."

Juvia tugged at the strap of her tank top. "Think I'll stick with clothes for now. Even _this_ is a little too revealing for me." Then she took a sip of her own tea.

But Gray considered her more seriously. "Is that why you're always wearing long sleeves and stuff?"

He'd never really thought about it before, but aside from that dress with the slits in the sides she'd started wearing since the Grand Magic Games which made it easier for her to show off a little leg (though he suspected there had been a more practical reason for that, that being so she could have more freedom of movement with her legs), she was never one to go around wearing anything that showed any skin that wasn't a part of her hands, face, or neck. Even in that dress with the slits she'd wear thigh-high boots that covered most of her legs anyway.

Juvia glanced at him sidelong and then almost burrowed into her mug of tea in a very embarrassed maneuver. "I'm uh…kinda shy about that stuff," she admitted. "I'd…never even shower with the other girls in Fairy Tail."

Gray raised his eyebrows. "Really? You wear all that because you're shy? About your body?"

Juvia swallowed more of her tea and ventured to look up at him, but her face had gone very red. "Yeah. I am. Even with those hot springs we had there for a bit…I'd wait until everyone else had gone for the day before having a soak myself." Then she disappeared into her mug of tea again.

Bemused, Gray turned and looked up at the moon. Then he had a thought and he turned back to her. "For a little while though, you were wearing that sleeveless dress. Back when you had your hair shorter. And before that, when you first approached me about joining Fairy Tail, you had that other sleeveless dress on…."

Juvia jumped slightly and nearly dropped her tea, but Gray reached out a hand and steadied the mug from underneath, still holding his own in his other hand.

"Um..thank you…right…uh…." Juvia slowly withdrew her mug from his grasp. "Well, I was…you know…."

Her voice dropped to a mumble, so Gray barely caught what she said next.

"I was…trying to…get your attention…."

It made Gray remember when they'd first met, facing off against each other in a duel when she'd still been a member of the dark guild Phantom Lord, which had been launching an all-out assault on Fairy Tail. That moment when she'd gotten really shy, like she was doing now, and told him that she didn't really want to fight him, that in fact she could protect him instead. Naturally he'd been rather perplexed by that, seeing as how they'd just met and as enemies no less. Still, he recalled it with the realization that that had been a part of this more muted side of her that she'd been showing more often.

He smiled at her.

"I made you that nervous, huh?"

Juvia looked over at him again, and she smiled back. "Yeah. But I guess being overzealous all the time instead didn't really help either. But I mean…you uh…just made me so…happy." She blushed even more furiously, but this time she tried not to hide in her tea again.

Even so, Gray hunched over a little, very apologetic. "Don't feel bad. It was a bit much yeah…well...I mean…much for _me_ , anyway. But…it was nice, seeing that smile on your face. You were so gloomy when we first met."

"Huh?" Juvia lifted her brows in surprise at him.

Gray lowered his gaze and considered instead the way the surface of his tea caught the moonlight, running the pad of his thumb along the lip of his mug. "Well, when you told me that for your whole life, you'd always been followed around by rain and storm clouds, that you'd never seen the blue sky, it got me thinking…what could've happened to a girl like you that would make something so sad like that happen?"

Juvia's eyes bugged out and she blinked at him like she couldn't believe what she was looking at, and then she gave a nervous laugh, making one of her weird faces. "Gray…I had no idea you thought about things like that," and her face went, if possible, even redder than Gray had ever seen it go. "Well…if you must know," she pressed on, mustering some courage, "I suppose part of it was just growing up in an orphanage…I mean…I never even _knew_ my parents…they died not long after I was born…and then well…there was that problem I had with the rain following me everywhere, and I suppose everyone making fun of me, and making fun of me _more_ for the gloomy rain…made it even gloomier. That's about as much as I can figure out about that, anyway."

Gray blinked, staring up at her, and then he felt guilty again. He knew all too well what it was like to be alone, to be left behind by the people who were meant to love you but instead were taken away. And he supposed she didn't really have much reason to believe he ever did things like wonder about what really went on in her head and what her life was like.

He took another sip of tea, and Juvia watched him, looking suddenly a little less bashful.

"I know you aren't completely cold though," she said to him, and then added, a little slyly, "after all, how could that be, when I felt the _warmth_ from your arms around me as you swooped in and saved me from that sword-stroke on Tenrou Island?!", she absolutely effervesced, her eyes popping with hearts.

Which made Gray choke on his gulp of tea. He took a minute to cough and pound his chest with his fist and get his breath back before he said, slightly hoarse, "I thought you were _unconscious_ for that!"

Juvia covered her mouth and giggled, still giving him a very sly look. " _Fu_ , _fu_ , _fu_."

"Ahem…yeah well…guess that should be the least of my worries," said Gray, clearing his throat. But he was glad she had brought it up, and it didn't pass his notice either that she'd tactfully avoided mentioning Ultear by name despite her involvement in that situation. After all, he still hadn't been able to open up to her about what Ultear had ultimately done later on during the dragon battle after the Grand Magic Games, and that if it hadn't been for her the two of them wouldn't be sitting here right now.

Somehow though, she seemed to sense that things concerning Ultear in general were sensitive with him and had to be tread upon lightly. After all, even if _he_ hadn't said anything to her, she had befriended Ultear's adopted daughter Meredy, and it was possible the two of them had touched upon the subject of how Gray and Ultear related to each other at least once or twice in their knowing each other.

But it was for that reason that he knew that one day, he _would_ be able to tell her about things like that, because if he was being honest with himself, he _wanted_ to be able to share things like that with someone, and with Juvia, he felt he could do it without fear or shame. When he was ready to, anyway. She was patient like that. And he was grateful to her about that too.

Then Juvia knocked back the rest of her tea. "It's okay Gray. I haven't told anyone about it." She made her eyebrows jump up and down rather conspiratorily before giggling again and hopping to her feet.

Gray watched her as she went inside, his gaze lingering on her until she'd closed the door behind her, and felt that warmth inside his chest that he'd been becoming more and more aware that being with her made him feel. Then he smiled gently up at the moon and finished off his own tea, already relaxed enough to fall back to sleep.

It had only been a week since they'd started living together like this, and to his pleasant surprise, he felt even more comfortable with her than he'd ever felt with anyone before. He hadn't lived with anyone in seclusion like this since Ur and Lyon, and Gray didn't miss how significant this was for him. Of course, their purpose here was to train and get stronger, especially where his new powers as an Ice Demon Slayer—care of his father—were concerned. Get stronger, strong enough that he could fulfill his father's dying wish and avenge his family at last by taking down the mastermind behind demons like Deliora and Keyes the Necromancer, the dark wizard Zeref's most powerful demon, E.N.D..

This comfortable domesticity though, he was actually feeling more peaceful now than he had in a very long time. And even the thought of overcoming the darkness that came with Demon Slayer magic seemed easier to bear knowing Juvia was near.

And, just for now, anyway, that would do.


	2. Housewarming

**Chapter Two**

 **Housewarming**

 _The idyllic little market town of Amaryllis had been experiencing nonstop rain for the past two weeks, something that as yet had been quite unprecedented. It didn't really become clear though as to why, until the town's orphanage, Madame Charity's Home for Children, took in a little baby girl with beautiful blue hair._

 _Or rather, it was eventually conclusively traced back to her by those who came to know her. Not that she was the cause of the rain of course, just that rain always hung around her, and everyone around her had to suffer for it._

 _Her parents had recently been killed in an accident, and it just so happened that her birth certificate showed that she'd been born not two weeks prior. Right when the seemingly endless rains first started._

 _Then eventually, one day, six years later, the little blue-haired girl went on a field trip to the port town of Hargeon with the other kids in the orphanage, and for the first time in those six years, the rains in Amaryllis stopped. Meanwhile, heavy rains came to the port town of Hargeon, and didn't let up until the field trippers from Madame Charity's orphanage left._

 _So when they returned to Amaryllis, the rains came with them._

 _After that, there came a day where the sun in Amaryllis actually came out again and the rain stopped, but then Madame Charity was doing a head count in the great hall of the orphanage and noted one child was missing._

 _"_ _Has anyone seen Juvia?" she asked._

 _Most of the kids looked at each other and shook their heads, not having a clue. So a search party was enlisted of all the adults in Amaryllis to look for the little lost girl, but to no avail._

 _Sure enough though, when Juvia Lockser came back later that afternoon, scraping the mud off her little blue boots, the rains came with her._

 _"_ There _you are!" Madame Charity scolded, grabbing little Juvia by the shoulders and practically shaking her. "What in the world were you thinking, Juvia, running off where no one could find you?!"_

 _Juvia shrank, looking very guilty. "I'm sorry, Madame Charity," she pleaded. "I didn't mean to…I was just hoping maybe I could find a place where I could see the sunshine and the blue sky…."_

 _Madame Charity blinked at her, nonplussed. "Whatever do you mean? But why so far? Don't you know that today was actually a sunny day in town?"_

 _And Juvia's eyes went wide, genuinely surprised at this. "It_ was _?"_

 _"_ _Yes! Were you so far from town that you couldn't see it?"_

 _"_ _Well…yeah…I mean…all I saw was more rain…."_

 _Madame Charity was about to let her frustration get the better of her when she realized that little Juvia was about to cry. And then it dawned on her, as it very quickly did everyone else._

 _Of course, being a shy girl, Juvia hadn't been very good at making friends to begin with. But when it became clear that she was somehow cursed by some power that caused rainy weather to follow her wherever she went, all of the other kids in the orphanage found little reason to hold back anything nasty that they'd always wanted to say about the weird, blue-haired girl who kept to herself because she was so shy._

 _"_ _I don't think Juvia should be allowed to come with us on any more field trips," said the very mean-faced young boy named Markel to some of the other kids in Juvia's age group, and the kids nodded and snickered in agreement._

 _Poor Juvia overheard the whole thing and drifted off to her own little room, crying into one of the many books she'd borrowed from the library. In one of them though, she read about a certain doll that could be used to ward off rain, called a_ teru teru bozu _, and, brightening with hope, started teaching herself how to sew so she could make these dolls for herself. She took to sewing with ease, as it turned out, and the first doll she made, she was very proud of it. She beamed and hugged the little doll, giggling, feeling like in a way she'd found a friend in it._

 _Of course she made more, and one of them she sewed together in a small enough size that he could pin it to her little blue coat and wear it._

 _However…it did nothing to stop the rain._

 _And predictably, the other kids teased her about this too, seeing her likeness for these dolls as an obsession worthy of ridicule._

 _By now Amaryllis had developed a drainage system to prevent flooding and mudslides from the constant rain, but there were still days where the rain got so bad it turned the ground into a muddy slurry. On one of those days, out on the orphanage playground, Markel, leading the other kids, tore off the_ teru teru bozu _Juvia had pinned to her coat and hurled it to the ground, stomping it into the mud with his foot._

 _"_ _What the heck is this stupid little doll thing for anyway?" he jeered, and he and the other kids crowed with mocking laughter._

 _Juvia ran away crying, gripping the handle of the little pink heart-patterned umbrella she'd bought with the small amount of pocket money she earned doing small cleaning jobs. She cried and cried all the way back to her little room in the orphanage, locked the door, took off her coat, hat, boots, and propped her umbrella open to let it dry. Then she pulled out her sewing box and started making more dolls._

 _But no matter how many more dolls she sewed, the rain just wouldn't stop, and she couldn't stop crying because of it, hiccupping and whimpering with each stitch she made._

 _"_ _Please…make the rain go away…just for one day," she begged. "Please…I wanna see the sun...and the blue sky..."_

 _This did nothing though. And eventually, when she'd grown into a woman, and struck out on her own as a water wizard, drawing strength from the rain that haunted her, she became known as Juvia the Rain Woman. Her power grew such that she reached S-class level in the dark guild Phantom Lord, who, instead of rejecting her, had welcomed her with open arms. It was hard not to accept when she was being accepted for the first time._

 _Until one day, when she encountered an ice wizard from the Fairy Tail guild, and…somehow…because she met him, perhaps because she had fallen for him so hard and fast as she did, or perhaps because when she'd fallen off the roof they'd been fighting on, he'd saved her instead of letting her meet her demise…the clouds above her at long last decided to part, the rain let up, and sun shone brilliantly through, revealing the beautiful blue sky._

 _"_ _The blue sky…" she murmured, squinting against the intense light of the sun. "I've…never seen it before…."_

 _"_ _Really?" said the ice wizard, who was also shirtless as he appeared to have felt compelled to half-strip during their duel. The smile he gave her though was too handsome for words, so at this point things like keeping one's clothes on was far from Juvia's mind. "Well, it's really pretty, don't you think?" he asked her, looking back up towards the brightening sky, making the raindrops that clung to his skin sparkle like diamonds._

 _"_ _Yes," Juvia whispered, smiling herself, regarding the ice wizard softly before looking back up at the sky with him. "Yes, it really is."_

* * *

Training with Gray was no picnic, as it turned out. He could see that in the way Juvia would get flustered in her way out of frustration. Then again, he was taking his cues from Ur.

That and there was the fact that they were supposed to be training _each other_ , not working as trainer and trainee. That said, Gray couldn't help himself given his own magical upbringing and how rigorous it had been. It looked as though Juvia was quite used to working on her own magic solo, so having someone critique her as part of the regiment irked her just teensy bit.

On the other hand, the simple fact that they'd managed Unison Raids together on more than one occasion made this all perplexing. Surely they should've just been able to read each other instinctually?

Maybe they were just thinking about it too much.

"Gray, you seem to forget that I was an elite member of the Element Four."

"No I remember that well enough."

"Well then, you should remember too that I'm more than capable of working defense. Or are we instead forgetting who shielded whom at the Akane Resort?"

Gray gave her a pinched look and turned away, his arms folded across his chest.

Juvia scowled at him, her hands on her hips.

"I still think your technique is ineffective compared to mine," Gray grumbled. "You use up too much energy with all those swirls of water. I was always taught to be quick about stuff like defense, keep things simple so your magic comes out strong as well as fast. Why do you think my ice shield isn't anything all that fancy?"

"But it's not enough for me to throw up a wall of water the way you do ice." Juvia stamped her foot. "Ice is solid so any shape will do if it can stand up on its own and take whatever attacks get thrown at it. Water, however, has to have something maintaining its momentum in order for it to stay up."

"Well then what good are you gonna be in a fight if you waste energy maintaining a shield? Ow!"

Gray grabbed at his cheek where Juvia had smacked him with Water Whip. Actually, it didn't hurt so much as surprise him—Juvia could never hurt him seriously—but he wanted a reason to pout at her, just a little, especially with the smug look she was giving him.

"Energy's just fine." And she flexed a bicep in her arm to further her point.

Gray gave her a come-on-give-me-a-break look. "Can't you just humor me?"

Juvia huffed and folded her arms. "Not really. I mean, water works differently than ice. It's a liquid, not a solid."

"Okay, fair point."

"Just let me do what works for me, and you do what works for you."

"Fine." Then Gray stripped off his shirt and resumed a fighting stance.

Juvia copied him, minus the stripping.

Gray raised his eyebrows at her. "You know, if you wanna be serious about this, you really should strip."

At this, Juvia's cheeks colored and she looked away. "Oh, come on. You know I'm not…for that. We talked about this, I'm shy."

And the way she said this, Gray felt something flutter in his chest. But it wasn't the first time Juvia had made him feel this. Even so, this was a new part of her that he was getting closer to, the fact that really she was very shy. He didn't even really realize how shy until they'd talked about it last night, and there was something about it that endeared her a little more to him.

That was how it seemed to be going, since the very beginning. She was this strange, crazy girl, who, little by little, had caused trickles of endearment to drip-drop their way into Gray's heart.

So he smiled, in spite of himself, and said, a little more kindly, "It's fine. Your magic has nothing to do with temperature, so I guess you really don't need to do it. It _is_ a little too easy to tease you about it though."

Juvia glanced at him, and then she smiled back. "Thanks Gray, I appreciate it." And then she struck him again with her Water Whip before he had a chance to put up a shield of ice.

* * *

Later that afternoon was time Juvia had set aside to go into Amefurashi's market and shop for supplies like food and other necessaries. She had asked Gray to make her a list of things he needed personally so she could pick them up, but he'd forgotten, not being one for doing things like making lists.

"Gray!" she scolded, shaking a finger at him. "How hard is it to write a list? Don't expect me to get everything you said you needed then, I've got my own list to keep track of, you know. But I won't forget anything on it because I took the time to write everything down."

"Look, I'll just come with you," Gray decided, pulling his long white jacket on and popping the collar.

"Very well," Juvia sighed, but if she was being honest with herself, she was rather pleased that he was going to accompany her, especially since she picked one of her cuter blue sundresses to wear there. Besides, any day she could wake up and it'd be too cold to wear things like sundresses, so might as well get use out of her cutest ones.

Her insides were vibrating though in spite of herself as the two of them took the forest path cutting through to the heart of Amefurashi village and its market. And her palms got clammy as she clutched the handle of the empty wicker shopping basket in both her hands.

Gray of course was as cool as usual, hands in his pockets.

But then he asked, after a few moments of silence between them with nothing but birdsong and the chitter of critters in the trees, "Hey…how come you started wearing your hair like that?"

And Juvia glanced at him and noticed that he was carefully looking off toward the forest, but there was a rise in color in his cheeks.

Was he…blushing? Just a little?

Juvia smiled a small smile and tugged briefly at her new sideways ponytail with one hand. "I um…just thought I would try it. I mean…it's good for training, to keep my hair out of my face like this, but I thought maybe…I'd do something a little beyond a regular old ponytail…um…." She chanced a quick glance at him before looking away again and focusing on the path ahead. "Do you um…not care for it?" she asked, fully aware that her heart was starting to knock rapidly against her ribs and breastbone.

She could've smacked herself.

What did he care how she wore her hair? He was just trying to make small talk, after all.

But then he said, "No, it's not that. I…was just curious."

Surprised, Juvia blinked at him, and then Gray actually smiled crookedly at her, the color still noticeable in his cheeks.

"I um…kinda like it," he added then, before he looked away again and scratched at his cheek with his index finger.

Now Juvia was just baffled.

 _What in the heck's gotten into him?_

Shaking her head, she found herself smiling nonetheless, on the verge of launching into a fangirl fit over the fact that he'd said her ponytail was _cute_. In lieu of this, she skipped once or twice, a joyful bounce in her step and a happy flutter in her stomach.

This made Gray chuckle, and then Juvia chuckled until the both of them were laughing, feeling a silliness come over the both of them, but neither of them really caring either.

* * *

In the market in Amefurashi, Juvia found herself having to scold Gray again as he tried sneaking junk food into their groceries. However, there was little she could do with the chocolate bars he'd instead opted to stuff into the pockets of his jacket when she next turned around to find him already eating one before they'd even checked out at the register.

" _Gray_!"

"Too late," was his reply, before he took another big chomp out of the candy.

"Okay, fine." Juvia waved it away. "But you're paying for those with your own money."

She heard him snort a laugh behind her, however this didn't really bother her, because somehow she sensed a fondness in the gesture that she'd never sensed in him before.

Besides, she got him to help her carry a bulk of the groceries too, since he was there with an extra set of arms. And after those were paid for, they went and took a look at some of the other shops in the village for other things they needed, like the bookstore and the hardware store. Juvia found a fabric store where she could restock a lot of things she needed in her sewing kit, as well as a few paperbacks in the bookstore that she could curl up with in her down time.

As it happened, Gray found a book as well, in an outside stall where a bunch of used, rare books were being sold. And at a bargain too, considering its contents, which was part of why it was so rare in the first place.

"So what sort of rare book did you find?" Juvia asked him when they returned to the house and Gray had unburdened himself of the groceries he'd been carrying in additional bags on the kitchen counter.

"Book on Demon Slayer magic I managed to find," said Gray, cursorily flicking through a few pages before snapping it shut. "It's pretty much a lost magic, like Dragon Slayer magic, so I'm amazed I could find something like this at all, even in a stall for rare books. The most I've been able to gather so far since I got this Demon Slayer magic is that it's made my powers as an ice wizard even stronger, being of the same element."

Juvia glanced briefly at his right arm, where she knew his skin was marked with the two arrow-shaped bands that was apparently the mark of his newly acquired Ice Demon Slayer magic from his father, an Ice Demon Slayer before him.

The Gray frowned slightly. "My biggest concern though is the effect it had on me during my and Natsu's fight with Mard Geer Tartaros."

This gave Juvia pause in stocking their pantry with what they'd just bought. "What effect is that?"

"Oh, well…it's nothing really," said Gray dismissively, suddenly quite cagey on the subject, and when Juvia turned around again he'd started busying himself with sticking the meats they'd bought in the icebox. "Just, you know, your standard um…difficulties that come with getting used to a new set of powers."

Juvia didn't really know what that was like, apart from perhaps when she'd had her Second Origin opened along with everyone else who'd participated in the Grand Magic Games, so she couldn't exactly comment on that, but that didn't mean she didn't feel a brush of concern as she briefly watched Gray's back before going back to putting stuff away in the pantry.

And then, before she knew what she was doing, and even though her heart pounded with nerves, she said, "Well…I don't think…your father would've given you that kind of power if he thought you couldn't handle it. I mean…you already knew what spells you could use with it the moment after you inherited it, right?"

Now it was Gray's turn to pause. Juvia felt it.

Mouth dry, she could've started crying right then and there, on top of now mentally kicking herself.

 _What're you saying stuff like that for? It's obvious he doesn't really wanna talk about this!_

But then, instead of getting bristly in the way he normally would have, he responded with some congeniality, "Yeah, I guess you make some good points there." He even laughed, very softly.

Juvia turned once more, shutting the pantry door behind her, and actually caught Gray smiling at her again. Which again got her heart thumping faster and louder, and she looked away, blushing furiously, cupping her face in her hands and swooning.

 _Oh that smile! I can't get over how handsome it is…!_

"Makin' ya nervous again, am I?" Gray teased, cutting into her train of thought, and she looked up to find him leaving the kitchen, taking the book on Demon Slayer magic and the newly purchased box of work tools from the hardware store with him.

No less, he was suddenly shirtless again, both his shirt and jacket having been discarded.

Juvia froze for a moment before she sweat-dropped and then let out a sigh, deflating a bit before finishing up with the groceries and then collecting Gray's discarded clothes from the floor and laying them over the back of one of the chairs at the table.

 _Way to go, Juvia, he still thinks you're nuts._

* * *

Gray meanwhile went and started using the tools in the new tool box to fix up a few things around the house, like a leaky pipe here and a loose board on the little porch there. With winter coming, they didn't need any more issues than what the cold weather was sure to bring.

Then he sat down on the porch steps and took a closer look through the book he'd bought on Demon Slayer magic, titled, _Fighting Fire with Fire: the Lost Art of Demon Slayer Magic_. Of course, to the average person, this title and all the text within this book would be illegible, given that it was written with an alphabet no longer used. Yet Gray found he could understand and read it, and he suspected that it had something to do with his Demon Slayer magic having hard-wired his brain for it. He was only able to come to this conclusion though given what the proprietor of the stall had said, which was, "Ha! Good luck reading _that_ gibberish!"

Skimming through it, he came across a lot of components of the magic that operated in the same way that other forms of Slayer magic did, like Dragon and God Slayer magic respectively. Something he already knew from being around Natsu, Gajeel, and Wendy. That said, he was glad to have a book like this to lay the art of demon slaying exclusively out for him. As well as the fact that the way he had obtained his magic was unconventional to say the least, as it said nothing of this kind of power being passed on through any kind of legacy from parent to child, and instead went solely over how a human wanting to learn Demon Slayer magic had to go about learning it from an actual demon, the same way Dragon Slayers learned their magic from actual dragons, and so on. Which meant that his father Silver Fullbuster, of course, had to have learned Demon Slayer magic from a demon. More likely, an ice demon to be precise, because that would be the only way his Slaying element would _be_ ice in the first place.

That wouldn't have been too hard, as he'd been a member of Tartaros, and somehow he'd still managed to hide the fact from most that he was actually a resurrected human, not one of Zeref's demons.

Gray, on the other hand, had inherited it through the arrow-like double-band marks on his right arm. He hadn't learned even a shred of this from a demon at all. Yet he somehow had still known more or less what to do with it when he'd received it (probably because it was associated with ice magic, something he was already familiar with as an element). He was quite aware though that he wasn't nearly experienced enough with it to use it against E.N.D..

Honestly, he should have known that already at the conclusion of the battle against Tartaros, but at the time he'd been running on adrenaline and using the desire for action to block out the pain of having to watch his father die again, which had unfortunately resulted in him stubbornly withholding the book of E.N.D. from Natsu when he'd briefly gotten his hands on it before Zeref had up and snatched it back.

So, if he was going to have any hope of getting a handle on this magic, he was going to have to learn whatever he could about it on his own. So far, he hadn't used the Slayer magic even once since the fight against Tartaros, so in training with Juvia had stuck to his Ice-Make magic.

That being the case, there were a few things Gray took careful note of as he read through the pages of this book that made Demon Slayer magic something of a dark cousin to Dragon and God Slayer magic (and likely any other Slayer magics that might be out there besides).

The thing with the markings he was already aware would be a problem if he didn't learn how to handle them properly, after how they'd appeared on his body when he'd used his newly obtained Slayer magic to protect him and Natsu from Mard Geer's Memento Mori. According to the book in his hands, that had to do mostly with the fact that he'd acquired the magic so unexpectedly and was learning to use it as he went and in a very small space of time.

Learning to use it too quickly could have those adverse effects on him of those marks appearing on his skin against his will.

That said though, if he could master it well enough, he could learn to alternatively summon and repress these markings of his own volition as part of a means to increase his immunity to demon curses like Memento Mori. In his personal case, it wasn't so much that he'd known this beforehand, any more than he'd known much of anything else he'd been able to do in the time immediately after he'd had this magic bequeathed to him. Again, he'd acted mostly on instinct and with his knowledge of Ice-Maker magic, and how he'd protected himself and Natsu from Mard Geer's ultimate curse had been no exception.

Still, he'd prefer to know more of what he was doing rather than act on blind emotion, now that he had the time to actually learn. So, again, he supposed it was fortunate that he hadn't been able to get to E.N.D. back then like he'd been driving almost single-mindedly towards for the latter half of the Tartros battle.

Another of the things he noted in this book was something that made sense to him, and that was the potentiality of his use of this magic "tainting" his soul, which could lead him to progressively lose his sanity and increase the risk of him making irrational decisions. This made sense to him given what kind of mental state his father had appeared to be in when he'd fought him. Though Silver had become more of the father he'd remembered at the end of their fight, initially there had definitely been an air of mania and madness about him, and he'd hinted at as much when he'd recounted the harrowing story of how he'd become a Demon Slayer for Tartaros.

Heaving a sigh, Gray moved on to further chapters in the book, feeling that heavy twinge inside that still came up when he thought about his encounter with his father. He went about this a little while longer before he noticed the time and shut the book again, dog-earing the page he was on so he could come back to it. He stood and surveyed the purpling sky, thinking briefly of everyone else in Fairy Tail, particularly Natsu, Erza, and Lucy, wondering if they were all out there somewhere, fighting to get stronger like he and Juvia were doing. Then he went and put the book on Demon Slayer magic away up in his room.

Then after he came in from gathering up some more firewood from the forest, the first thing that struck him was the delicious aroma coming from kitchen where Juvia was now in the middle of making dinner.

The second he smelled this, his stomach growled and he realized just how hungry he'd gotten since lunch. Just a week after eating Juvia's cooking, and that alone had become good enough evidence that she was pretty darn good housemate. It occurred to him too that this was probably the first time in a long time that he'd been getting regular proper meals since living in Ur's care. Not that he didn't know how to cook or anything, but since it had just been him, he'd slid into a routine of eating out more often than not—caramade franks and the like—so something like the big homemade stew that Juvia was preparing now hadn't really been a part of his regular diet.

On his way to the kitchen, he passed through their little sitting room, which they'd gradually been making cozier with more books on the bookshelf and things like bottles of liquor in the small liquor cabinet in the corner and a coffee table with a sofa and couple of squashy armchairs, adding more lamps to give it more light. And on that coffee table he saw where Juvia had taken out that sewing kit of hers, inside of which happened to be one of those ghosty-looking dolls she used to keep on her.

And he realized he'd never asked her about those, and felt a little bad about that considering the time they had spent together on a few jobs they'd previously done for Fairy Tail. The subject of conversation, he supposed, had never really made any opportune time to bring them up, but even so.

Moreover, he realized he was genuinely curious about them.

So, after he and Juvia had sat down to dinner, he having put another shirt on at her insistence, he brought them up.

"They're supposed to keep rain away," she told him, which, given what Gray knew about her, made perfect sense. "I sewed them all the time back when I was a child growing up in the orphanage, trying to get the rain to leave me alone. After all…all the other kids didn't want to be around a girl who brought them nothing but gloomy rain." Then she picked at the potatoes in her stew. "Of course, when it appeared that they had no effect on the rain that always followed me, and that I was stronger in the rain as a water mage anyway, I kept them more for…attachment reasons. I mean…they were all I had…since I didn't have real friends…."

"I see," said Gray, turning pensive. "Hm."

Something about her expression, sad even when she tried to smile through it, pricked Gray on the inside. But, unable to think of something else to say to cheer her up (that was nothing new), he decided instead to reach past his bowl of stew and create a tiny ice sculpture between them on the table, one in the shape of a flower in a pattern similar to the ice flowers Ur and Ultear both used to create with their own Ice-Make magic.

Juvia's eyes gleamed when she saw the flower bloom. "Oh…so pretty…." The sparkle of the ice actually reflected her in the bright blue pools of her eyes.

And Gray smiled at her improved mood, his own mood improved for it.

Then she looked up at him and their eyes met. And he saw that he didn't have to put into words for her what he'd said to her with that ice flower. She already knew what that ice flower meant.

 _I know what it's like to feel alone._

 _It's okay now though, because you aren't alone anymore._

They were words he couldn't say out loud, but they were words he found he wanted to express to her nonetheless, the kind of words he'd never expressed to anyone in his life.

He didn't know how he knew she knew what he was saying with that flower either, he just…felt it. In the way she smiled at him. In the way that the next words out of her mouth were, "You know, I have to say, I wish I could have met your teacher, Ur."

And instead of wanting to clam up the way he used to when it came to anything regarding his past, Gray found himself eager to open up. As he dropped the fully-bloomed ice flower in Juvia's glass of water, where it rested on top of the other ice cubes already floating in it, he said, "You know, I think Ur actually would've liked you. I mean…I think we both know my dad kind of did."

Juvia brightened at this, her cheeks coloring, though she didn't go full-on fangirl either. "You really think so?" she asked with her usual eagerness nonetheless.

But Gray just laughed. "Yeah. I really do."

"What…makes you say that?"

"I dunno. Just 'cause."

Then it was Juvia who laughed.

"What?" asked Gray, a little amused and a little puzzled at the same time.

Juvia just shook her head though. "Nothing. Just another example of your wonderful way with words," she added playfully.

Gray blinked at her and then he laughed again, and she laughed too. And then they went on chattering about this and that over the rest of the stew Juvia had cooked for them.

* * *

After dinner, Gray did his part by clearing the dishes and washing them, much to Juvia's appreciation. Which gave her time to clear up her sewing in the sitting room and then settle in with one of her new books bought from the bookstore that day, having changed into her favorite tank top and sleeping shorts.

The book was an anthology of short stories, all of them about love, naturally.

She got that Gray was watching her from the doorway to the kitchen. The moment she looked up though, he jumped slightly, his cheeks coloring the way they'd done earlier, and he made a show of simply being on his way to sticking the rest of the jewel left over from when they'd went shopping that day in the money tin on the mantlepiece over the fireplace.

As he did though, he seemed to dig a little deeper in the tin and a frown settled over his face.

"Gray?" Juvia asked, marking her spot in her book and closing it.

"Mmm, getting a bit low on funds," Gray told her, tipping the tin forward so she could see how little jewel was left in it.

" _Already_?" Juvia stood and went over to have a closer look, digging through the tin herself. Indeed, they had barely enough for the food budget, much less for anything else they might need. "But we've only been here a _week_." She gaped at him.

Gray shrugged. "Yeah, and we've bought a few things."

"Well…that _is_ true," Juvia agreed. When they'd first come to live here just a week prior, the place had virtually been empty save for a few spare pieces of furniture (that's why they'd gotten it for such a low price). So it hadn't exactly been very homey. Something Juvia had been an advocate of remedying, and Gray had gone along with it. On the other hand, he seemed pleased with what they'd done with the place so far, as was she.

Still, that did nothing to ease the fact that they were now currently low on money.

But when Juvia looked at Gray again, he was grinning, almost mischievously.

"Guess this means we'll have to take on a job or two," he said with a smirk.

"Oh. Right. Of course."

And before Juvia could help herself, she swooned again.


	3. Labyrinth

**Chapter Three**

 **Labyrinth**

 _Time seemed to pass slowly and quickly at the same time from the day Gray Fullbuster was born. It seemed that one day his wife had been eagerly nursing their baby boy for the first day, only for baby Gray to already be walking for the first time on his wobbly little legs._

 _Silver and Mika would both lead him by the hand out in their snowy village, wrapped in their coats and scarves, boots crunching through the snow. Mika would coax Gray into chasing her, and he'd break into a giggle and toddle after her, and then she'd gush over how cute his little boots were while making him squeal with laughter when she attacked him with tickly kisses on his fat little neck. Silver would do a bit of what little ice magic he'd picked up and create little sculptures of animals, much to Gray's delight, the ice sparkling in his eyes._

 _When he got a little older, Silver introduced him to snowball fights. Gray turned out to be a natural, quick on his feet and showing an aptitude for cleverness that Silver couldn't help being proud of even if it meant he got pummeled more often than not by his son's snowy bombardments._

 _One evening Silver found himself marveling at how his son had already just turned six, when it felt like he'd just been watching him take his first steps on his own in the snow._

 _He paid for this moment of reflection, with Gray taking advantage of his inattention and smacking him in the face with a very well-packed snowball._

 _"Ow!"_

 _"Ha, ha, sorry Dad!" Gray held his sides as he burst into peals of laughter._

 _"Ah ha, aren't you clever?" But Silver's smile was mischievous, and he lunged forward and scooped up his son before the boy knew what hit him. Rendering him helpless, he was able to tackle him with a barrage of tickling._

 _Gray kicked and squealed in surprise, but his struggle was weakened by the paralysis brought on by being tickled so that all he could do was scream with laughter. And even that was difficult as he grew breathless with it._

 _"Dad! Ah! Stop! No!" he gasped, his face reddening._

 _At which point Silver showed him mercy and stopped, pulling Gray up onto his lap in the snow. "There. That better?"_

 _"Yeah…but…I still won," Gray declared, catching his breath, giving his father a grin that was just as mischievous as Silver's had been._

 _"Won? Who tackled who?"_

 _"I got you with the snowball! First!"_

 _"Oh okay, fine, but if you're the winner then this is what you get."_

 _And before Gray could stop him Silver gave his son a noogie._

 _"Aaaaah! Dad!" But Gray was laughing even harder. At the same time though, he struggled to break free and did, then tried to pay his father back in kind, and actually managed to pin Silver to the ground when he threw all his weight into a tackle of his own._

 _"Gaaah! Okay, you've got me!" Silver laughed between gasps for air, leaving Gray, perched proudly on his chest, the victor once again._

 _Silver grinned up at him. "You got some tough stuff in you, kiddo."_

 _At this, Gray actually became a little sheepish. It was a mark of how much he actually looked up to his father._

 _"So you mean…I'll get stronger when I grow up? Like you?" he asked._

 _"Hey, if I'm sure of anything, I'm sure of this," Silver told him, his expression softening. "I know you'll be a strong man, Gray."_

 _"Hm." Gray held up an arm and made a fist, pounding it into the palm of his other hand. Then he looked at his father. "Could I really?"_

 _"Of course." Silver went back to grinning more playfully._

 _"Silver! Gray! Time for dinner!"_

 _Gray whipped his head around in the direction of their house in town, and Silver sat up, holding Gray in his lap again._

 _"Ah, that's your mom. Better call it a day."_

 _"But I wanna play some more!" Gray protested._

 _"Sorry kiddo, Mom's calling us in," said Silver firmly, setting Gray on his feet as he stood them both up._

 _When Gray pouted and scowled, Silver laughed and then lunged for his son's legs. He had him squealing with laughter again as he scooped him up and lifted him onto his shoulders._

 _"Wahoo!" Gray crowed, forgetting his disgruntlement. He and his father were both beaming as his father carried him down to their house where Mika was waiting for them, wrapped in a sweater, hugging herself as she stood in the snow and smiling._

 _The moment Gray slid off Silver's shoulders, Mika opened her arms and pulled her little boy into a hug, cooing over how cute he was all flushed in the face with cold._

 _"Mom, cut it out," Gray griped when she started covering him in kisses._

 _"Oh, come on, your friends aren't around, are they?" Mika teased, and then she squeezed him tight. "They can't see how much your mama loves her baby right now, can they?!"_

 _At which point Gray relented and smiled in spite of himself. If the other village boys were around, he'd have made more of a fuss, but he was still young enough that even though he wanted to look tough and cool in front of his pals, he was really happy getting hugs and kisses from his mother._

 _Mika gave him one last kiss and then ushered him inside with a pat on the back. "Okay you, inside and wash up."_

 _"Okay, okay!" Gray made a show of being exasperated again as he darted inside._

 _Mika grinned as she watched him go in, then stood to greet her husband. "You too, Silver."_

 _"If the lady insists," Silver flirted, and Mika giggled as he leaned in and kissed her, breaking apart when they heard their son making mock-retching noises as he watched them from the door._

 _"Hey, what did I tell you?" Mika admonished her son, raising a white blonde eyebrow._

 _At which Gray yelped and ducked back inside, laughing._

 _"Mmmm, I can't wait 'till he starts to_ like _the idea of kissing," said Silver, sliding an arm around his wife._

 _"So you can teach him all your wily ways?" said Mika, playfully poking her husband in the ribs._

 _"Ow!" Silver laughed as he shut the door behind them, and then he poked his wife back and she giggled at him to stop, playfully pulling away, throwing a smile at him over her shoulder before she disappeared into the kitchen._

 _Silver felt his chest grow hot for a moment, watching her like this. They'd been trying for another baby lately, Mika musing about how adorable it would be if Gray maybe had a little sister, and Silver had a feeling that much later, after they'd put Gray to bed, they'd be at it again. He hummed to himself as he thought about this and joined his wife and son at the dinner table._

* * *

"This is a little more difficult without having a guild job board available to you twenty-four-seven," Gray admitted when he and Juvia went into the village the next day to seek out a wizard job they could get paid for.

"Well, why don't we try the tavern?" Juvia suggested when they arrived in Amefurashi. She pointed to the village's only pub, The Scruffy Robin, which, this early in the morning, only had the tenants and patrons sobering up, or the ones who simply never left. So the dregs, basically.

Gray frowned at the idea. Something unsettling stirred inside him at the prospect of having Juvia around the likes of people like that. They were more than likely harmless, of course, at least the ones staying in the inn above the tavern who weren't sobering up but probably just trying to have the tavern breakfast, but the rest, well…anyone who had nothing better to do than waste their lives in a bar wasn't exactly a model citizen.

Unless you were in a guild and spent a lot of time in your guild hall. That was different. Plus, everyone in Fairy Tail (with the exception of what's his face) frequently went in and out to and from jobs. So the drinks were earned. That and the people in Fairy Tail weren't scoundrels (even if there were those who would beg to differ, but that hardly mattered).

"Gray?" Juvia waved a hand in front of his face.

Gray blinked, realizing he'd gotten lost in his own thoughts there for a moment and shook his head. "Sorry. Just um. Thinking. Maybe the tavern isn't the best place at this time of day. I mean…there probably aren't a lot of people in there talking about anything useful that'd give us a lead."

Juvia raised her eyebrows. "Okay, but there might be a board in there that's like the job board we had in the Fairy Tail guild hall," she pointed out. "You know, a place where they pin up wanted posters for fugitives, things like that?"

"Oh." Gray mentally face-palmed. How had he not thought of that? He'd been too busy thinking more about Juvia being preyed upon by drunk vagrants and at the same time trying to sort out how being a member of Fairy Tail and drinking all day in the guild hall was any different than being a drunkard in a tavern.

 _What the hell…?_

"Right, um….that's a good point."

Juvia had her hands on her hips, and she gave Gray a satisfied smile. "Gray, darling, I know you're pretty smart, on top of being gorgeously handsome, but sometimes you can be really spacey."

Then, before Gray could say anything, she pushed her way into the bar, leaving him no choice but to follow her, his heart fluttering hot in his chest from when she'd called him "smart" and "gorgeously handsome". And "darling".

* * *

The moment they entered the bar, Juvia felt every pair of eyes clap onto them—well, _her_ , she felt was more accurate. Her face flushed fiercely, but she did her best not to seem ruffled, making a beeline for the notice board by the bar. She felt Gray trail behind her, and glanced over her shoulder just once and noticed he was giving eyes to the other guys in the bar, and maybe it was her imagination…but it looked like he was trying to warn them off…like a wolf raising its hackles in warning.

Doing her utmost to ignore the excited wriggle in her stomach, she approached the board and did a once-over on what was there. But by the looks of things, there was really only one thing pinned there that looked like a straight job. Everything else was a wanted poster with a reward from the police or—worse yet—the Magic Council (the last people they wanted to deal with). She felt a pang when she caught sight of one that read, "Where has Fairy Tail gone?" which included a photo of the whole guild taken during the victory euphoria of winning the Grand Magic Games.

Then Gray's arm came up and tore that one down. Juvia watched him fold it up and tuck it in the inside breast pocket of his long white coat and raised an eyebrow at him.

"I'd rather people not know we're from Fairy Tail," he told her quietly. "At least not like that."

"That's probably for the best," Juvia agreed. Then she turned her attention back to the board, pointing at the notice asking for wizards and offering money. "A village called Lupine's got a problem with a phantom labyrinth that appeared out of nowhere and now there're creatures coming out of it and preying on the civilians."

"Mmmm…sounds kinda sketchy. Not to mention dangerous." Gray scratched the side of his face. "Almost like an S-class job."

Juvia threw him a nonplussed expression at him. "It doesn't _say_ it's S-class though. Anyway, what do you mean by 'sketchy'? What's sketchy about it?"

"Come on. A _phantom_ labyrinth? Sounds like something an illusionist would get mixed up in." Gray spoke the word "illusionist" with some distaste.

"Okay, then maybe we should take a straight up bounty job." Juvia tapped one of the wanted posters.

"Mmmmmmmmm." Gray glanced between all the notices and then realized the same thing that Juvia already had. "Damn it. The one for Lupine is the one that pays the best. And we need all the money we can get. We have more moths than coins in that box."

"Hmph." Juvia yanked the notice off the board. "Well, that settles it then. Unless you wanna check some place like the town hall?"

Though they took the notice with them, they did poke about town hall for some alternative job information. Unfortunately, they came up with peanuts, leaving the Lupine job their only choice. Well, not really. It was more accurate to say it was the only job they were willing to take. Two-hundred-thousand jewel for a single job didn't come often (no less one that wasn't labeled S-class), even if it was going to get split between two people.

So they dropped back by the house just long enough for both of them to pack themselves a knapsack and then set off.

Admittedly, another convenient thing about Fairy Tail was that they'd never had to worry much about transport. Unless they had to take the train, they usually had a wagon or carriage (all three much to Natsu's dismay) that would take them where they needed to go on big team missions where a lot of baggage was involved (especially when it came to Erza).

Here, Gray and Juvia had to fend for themselves where that was concerned. The distance to their destination warranted it, seeing as how the trains didn't run from Amefurashi to towns like Lupine.

That said, it was rather nice to be hitching a ride on the back of a farmer's wagon full of hay. Juvia at least enjoyed sitting in the back with her legs dangling over the edge as she ate an apple. With Gray beside her, lying back in the hay behind them with his hands tucked beneath his head and his eyes closed. Though her insecure side told her that he was avoiding conversation, she smiled softly at the rise and fall of his chest and his tranquilly sleeping face. He seemed content for the moment, and despite everything, she was glad to see it. He needed more of that sort of thing in his life.

And then, feeling content herself, Juvia turned back to look out at the road they were leaving behind, taking another bite into her apple.

* * *

"Gray?"

Someone was gently shaking him. Gray grunted and tried lifting his arm to shove whoever was bothering him away, but his limbs were too heavy with sleep.

" _Gray_."

Okay, that sounded kinda serious.

"What?" Gray groused, squinting open his eyes, vaguely aware that the wagon was no longer moving.

Juvia's stern and admonishing expression loomed over him. "We're here," she huffed.

"Oh!" Suddenly flustered, Gray sat bolt upright, Juvia taking a step back to give him space. He found himself feeling about as crumpled as his hair and clothes were from sleeping. "Sorry," he muttered, feeling bad about having been so grouchy.

Juvia gave him a forgiving and patient smile though and reached over to pick out the bits of hay stuck in his hair. Gray watched her do it and then caught her eye, at which point she got self-conscious and flusteredly brushed the rest of the hay out.

He found himself feeling a bit bereft though when she finished and withdrew her hand. He'd liked that feeling of her fingers in his hair.

Shaking it off, he got to his feet and saw to brushing off the hay that clung to his clothes while Juvia bade the wagon driver farewell. The driver did the same and then cracked his whip, and the wagon lurched forward and continued on down the road, leaving Gray and Juvia at the entrance to the rather gloomy-looking little hamlet of Lupine. There was no rain, but the sky was overcast with livid clouds.

And beyond the village they could see a maze of hedges stretching on and on and disappearing into a low mist that was obviously the labyrinth.

"Guess we should pop in on who's in charge here," said Gray, tugging at his shirt collar.

"After you then," said Juvia with a sly edge.

But he smirked right back at her and stuffed his hands in his pockets before waltzing into the village with her beside him.

Most people scurried off at the sight of them, or withdrew into their houses, slamming the shutters of their windows and locking them. One person though whispered in another's ear, and that person dashed off, and a few moments later returned with an invitation to the mayor's mansion, which was situated at the other end of the street, up a little ways on a declivity lush with a rose garden and had an overlooking view of the labyrinth.

Juvia took a deep breath as they followed the urchin up the stone steps to the front door of the mansion. "Ah, it _did_ just rain. You smell that? I love gardens that smell of rain."

Gray chuckled a few steps behind her. "I'll take your word for it that it smells like that." But then, curious, he closed his eyes, just for a moment, and took a small whiff. And smiled a bit more widely.

He did like that fresh rain smell.

* * *

Juvia wondered if this was supposed to be some kind of joke.

But the little girl sitting at the desk in the mansion's study had a deadpan expression of complete and unflinching seriousness. She might've had her blonde hair done up in a cute little ponytail and wore a frilly pink taffeta dress trimmed with white lace, but her amber eyes had the sharpness of a shrewd businessman.

So Juvia kept her mouth shut. As long as they got paid, she'd believe anything, including the idea that a little girl was the mayor of a village. She did exchange a glance with Gray, and judging by his expression, he seemed to be having thoughts similar to hers.

The wiry manservant in his pressed black tux who stood beside the petite mayor coughed into his hand. "Miss Rosamunde?" he prompted. "Should we…explain the situation to them in detail?"

"Yes," sighed Mayor Rosamunde. "Here is the situation as it stands," she began, adopting a tone that was more akin to a general heading a war meeting than a little girl, even though she spoke in a little girl's tiny voice, "my townspeople are being preyed upon by some kind of violent creature or creatures that, as far as we can tell, come out of the labyrinth. We've had to put out a curfew, since the attacks seem only to occur after nightfall, and this has cut down casualties considerably. That is, until mutilated corpses started turning up in daylight. And now a few of the townspeople have fled, naturally. But most refuse to uproot even with all of this death and danger about, and as long as they're here, I'll stay to watch over them."

She lowered her heavy lashes, reminding Juvia of the way a cat looks at you when you've interrupted their nap.

Mayor Rosamunde put her clasped hands on the blotter set before her on her desk. "My father, the mayor before me…was one of the first victims." Something flashed in her eyes.

Juvia recognized that flash. She glanced sidelong at Gray again, and saw that he noticed too. He set his jaw, his eyes hardening.

Oh yes. There was a kindred moment there, both of them recognizing in each other in fact, that thirst for revenge. Juvia though found herself concerned to see it in someone as young as Mayor Rosamunde.

She couldn't be more than ten.

Juvia bit her lip, but still refrained from speaking.

"So, as acting mayor, I will not rest until this abomination of nature is dealt with." Rosamunde's clasped hands clenched together more tightly. "Can I count on the two of you to take care of this matter, once and for all? I'll make no secret of the fact that we are quite desperate at this point."

Juvia opened her mouth, but Gray beat her to it.

"We'll take care of it," he said, an edge to his voice, and Juvia noticed his hands at his sides curl into fists. "We swear to it."

Rosamunde's eyes flicked onto Juvia, and Juvia nodded.

"Absolutely," she said.

"Well then, very good." And then Rosamunde's mouth curled into a half-smile, though it did little to give her visage any levity.

"Gray, are you sure you're still okay to do this?" Juvia couldn't help asking as the two of them left the mansion to take lodging down at the town's inn, The Crooked Claw.

"Hm?" Gray blinked at her, and his dark eyes were clear again, all clouds of anger that were there before completely dissipated.

Feeling this was too much of a delicate thing to press into right now, Juvia opted to be satisfied with his present behavior. Maybe he had better control than she thought. Not that she'd ever thought he was irrational, they had worked together on jobs multiple times before and had encountered a myriad of people that had varying effects on them and it had never been an issue before, but…

…she also knew how he could be when things hit _too close_ to home for him.

Moreover, that Rosamunde left her with a creepy after-vibe.

Even so, for now, she tried to smile. "Never mind. Let's just get to the inn, shall we?"

"So, what's our strategy?" she asked after they'd arrived at The Crooked Claw, drawing back the curtains in their room. To save money they were only able to afford the one room, but of course there were two beds. Juvia still had her crazy daydreams as usual, even as she was well aware that it was hardly the time to imagine ravishing Gray's toned naked body on a bed in an inn.

Gray paused in the middle of going through his knapsack, having graciously given Juvia the bed by the window. "Strategy?

Juvia huffed and shook her head, but she was smiling too. "You. You're as bad as Natsu." She turned around and smirked at the way her words made him bristle. "You just wanna charge in there, guns blazing."

"We don't have guns," Gray muttered. "That's Alzack and Bisca's schtick."

"It's a figure of speech, Gray." She hesitated, giving Gray a smile that was more sympathetic. "Sorry for the comparison, but I couldn't help it. Anyway…I still have them all on my mind."

At which Gray gave a wistful chuckle. "Yeah, same here. Actually, I'll admit I even miss Flame-brain." Then he caught Juvia's eye and added. "And by that I mean, miss kicking his ass."

Juvia laughed. "But of course."

Then Gray hesitated, before he admitted more soberly, "I do worry about them though. Especially Natsu. I don't think he was around for anyone to tell him that Fairy Tail's…you know…." He sighed. "Returning to the guild hall to find it…it'd crush the guy. I know that much."

"We'll see them again," said Juvia with her usual optimism, going over and opening up her own knapsack. "Fairy Tail's a place that can never really break apart, you know. We're too bound to each other, regardless of whether the guild hall's still active and it's written down on paper. Fairy hearts forever, and all that, right?"

She glanced up at the way Gray had gone so quiet, and blushed when she caught him staring. Because he was smiling too, and fondly.

"You say some pretty awesome things, you know that?" he murmured.

Their gazes held for a moment, but then everything was shattered by a blood-curdling scream from the street that had the hairs on the back of Juvia's neck standing on end.

* * *

Gray barreled down the stairs and out the door of the inn, Juvia following on his heels. They both stopped short when they reached the street, and Juvia gasped and covered her mouth with her hands, unable to help herself.

A crowd had gathered in the middle of the street, many of them gasping and crying out as well, the men clenching their fists and the women and the children huddling closer together.

"Will this nightmare never cease?!" one person exclaimed.

"That's it, one more of these and I'm out of here!" another declared as panic rose in the air.

And there, in the middle of the crowd, something that might have been a person was now nothing more than a hunk of bloodied meat with clothes.

Gray's stomach clenched, for a moment reminded of the corpses he had passed while wandering, helpless, afraid, and grief-stricken, through the ruins of his home village when Deliora had laid waste to it—even though he had been a small child at the time, those visions swam into his nightmares every now and then, fresh as the day he first saw them. But this time he shook off his trauma-induced terror when he felt Juvia quaking beside him.

Normally, he supposed, she might've grabbed his arm and clung to him by now in a moment like this, but perhaps here she was too transfixed by the horror of the mutilated person to do much of anything except gape in frozen terror. Nevertheless, he felt an impulse to reassure her in some way.

However, as usual, he had no idea what to say, never being good with words at the best of times, never mind times like these. And forget any physical offers of comfort, as far as his comfort level was concerned, that was completely off the table. Except in like, emergencies. Maybe.

Juvia though, she finally lowered her hands and gave Gray a rather grave but determined look, and he found himself able to read her rather well.

And they both nodded.

"So," she said, taking a deep breath and letting it out, composing herself. "Strategy?"

"Okay," said Gray slowly, turning back to the body and trying to assume a more clinical mindset, detaching himself from the horror of what was before him. "Well, this might not be the first daylight attack, but…how is it no one even saw the thing coming? I mean…the labyrinth's down a ways from here. How come no one saw?"

"Hm." Juvia looked over the heads of the crowd, out towards the labyrinth looming ominously in the background. "Suppose we go check it out? Maybe stake out the entrance? Then we'll have an idea what we're dealing with before we take on the hard part and destroy every monster lurking in there?" Then she smiled rather demurely. "I saw a shop selling toasted almonds on the way here."

Gray frowned. "There's just been a guy who's been attacked, and you wanna _wait_ to see if anything _else_ happens? _And_ you're thinking about eating toasted almonds? Look, we know they're some species of beast, thanks to what Mayor Rosamunde said, and we know for damn sure that they turn anyone they come across into ground roast."

"Well, sure, but if we stake out the entrance, we not only lure our prey onto our turf, more or less, but we block another one from sneaking out. See what I'm saying?"

"Yeah, I guess so."

Juvia must've sensed how unconvinced Gray still was, so she gave him a more reassuring and comforting smile. "Doing it like this, we won't let them take another life. That's a promise."

Gray raised his eyebrows at her, and then he too smiled at her conviction to their task here.

"Hey, what're those two doing here?"

Looking up, Gray and Juvia both realized only then that the other townsfolk had noticed them, and easily picked up that they were outsiders to the community.

"Are you here to save us from this scourge?" asked one woman desperately, and there was something matronly about her that gave Gray the impression that she was a mother with either children she feared for, or children she'd already lost to this menace. Or both.

He straightened. "We're here to take care of your pest problem," he said, trying as usual to sound badass about it.

The townsfolk looked around and murmured amongst each other, and then the woman lurched forward and grabbed Gray by the sleeve of his long jacket.

"You are? Oh thank goodness…!"

She sounded on the edge of tears, and as much as Gray sympathized with her plight, discomfiture squirmed inside him at this stranger throwing herself at him with such a display of emotion.

Luckily, Juvia stepped in and smoothed things over with her compassionate smile.

"We are, and we won't stop until the job's done," she promised her, and in her reassurance, the mother released Gray's sleeve and pressed Juvia's hand instead, giving Gray leave to step aside.

Then a man who looked like a blacksmith of some sort approached them and raised an eyebrow at them. "Hey, aren't you guys from…I feel like I've seen you guys from somewhere…." He scratched at his chin, and Gray felt the folded poster from The Scruffy Robin still in the inside breast pocket of his coat.

"Juvia, we'd better be going if we're gonna get on this," he said, taking Juvia's hand and tugging her with him away from the crowd.

"O…kay," Juvia said slowly, giving a hasty farewell to the woman and the other onlookers as she went along with Gray back into the inn so they could finish gearing up for the fight and what looked to be a long night ahead of them…one where they might not even get a chance to sleep in the beds they were paying for.

And then Gray became more aware of the feeling of Juvia's hand in his. Not that he hadn't felt it before, but when he did, it always did what it was doing to him now, and inspired a warm fluttering in his chest. One that both excited and scared him at the same time, if he was being honest.

At the stairs leading up to their room, the cacophony of the bar in the background as news of the newly mutilated victim was passed around and spread like wildfire, he stopped and released her, retreating into the safety that came with keeping his feelings and her feelings at a distance from each other. But, unable to help himself, he looked up to catch Juvia's eye, and saw that she didn't actually look despondent, though her face had flushed a little as would have been expected.

"Gray?" she asked, curious as to why he was pausing at the bottom of the stairs. "What's wrong?"

"Uh, nothing," Gray lied, and turned away, starting up towards their room again, Juvia following behind.

He wished he wasn't so afraid of his feelings. Lately, he'd actually find himself craving them, craving the source of their stimulation—that source being Juvia. But until he was more sure of himself, until he could get over how scared he was, he couldn't bring himself to act on them too openly.

Yet, Juvia was nothing if not patient, even with her grandiose overtures of love, the throbbing red and pink hearts she rained upon him in her flashiest displays of affection.

Which made her, in fact, all the more worthy of his fondness for her.

* * *

"Okay, okay, okay, gotta admit, this is pretty smart," Gray conceded, as he and Juvia were staking out the entrance to the labyrinth a little more than an hour later, just as the sun was setting below the sparse trees ringing the town.

As it was, Gray was rather enjoying just sitting on a rock while sharing a bunch of toasted almonds wrapped in paper between them.

"Smart because it's logical, or smart for another reason?" asked Juvia, being nonchalant as she popped an almond into her mouth.

"Mmmmm." Gray suddenly found himself unable to really answer as he got distracted by the shape of his companion's lips and the way cinnamon sugar was dusting them (and, for a split-second, what it would feel like to taste that sugar on those lips), and instead reached for more almonds to pop into his own mouth, seeing as how Juvia was the one holding the cone wrapping containing them.

Juvia glanced at him, quirking a puzzled eyebrow. "Yes?"

"Mmmmmmmmmmm." Gray still couldn't find any words, as he stuffed more almonds into his mouth, but he could feel his anxiety at having nothing more coherent to say in the tone of his voice.

At which point Juvia gave up, rolling her eyes. But she was grinning as she put more almonds in her mouth.

But then, in that moment, something came over Gray. A vulnerability of sorts. He couldn't say what triggered it, though if he had to guess, it was probably a mix of the two of them being alone like this, on a stake out rather than in a more relaxing situation, and the fact that it hadn't escaped his notice that she'd been expressing concern for him earlier after they'd spoken with Mayor Rosamunde. Because of course, it would be just like her by now to be able to pick up on things like his own more subtle expressions of anger…anger for what these demons had done to a child like Mayor Rosamunde.

So the next thing he said was, "Actually…seeing that little girl who's apparently this town's mayor—weird as that is—and…hearing her story…it reminded me of something."

"Oh?"

She was trying to sound casual, but he knew Juvia was listening with that kind of keenness required of discerning someone's thoughts and intentions and feelings by the tone of their voice as well as the words they use.

"I remember…shortly before my…parents died…they'd been…eh…talking about maybe having another kid. Mom kept…gushing about me having a little sister. At the time I guess I'd've preferred a little brother, but I don't really remember much about that. I just remember what she said…and the way my dad looked at her. Looking back on it now though, I think I better understand what kind of look he was giving her."

"And I think I can pretty much guess," said Juvia softly and rather knowingly. "Actually, if I can be frank, it wouldn't surprise me if your dad was a bit of a flirt."

Gray looked up at her and she was smiling gently at him.

"Did this Mayor Rosamunde make you think of a little sister that…never was?" she pressed further, though she was careful about it.

Even so, Gray trusted her by now to take care of the more delicate things that passed his lips, and it felt good, rather than made him feel raw, to tell her these things. And in doing so, he got to learn more about her too, and he was rather enjoying that as well.

He smiled. "Maybe a bit," he admitted.

"It sounds like your parents were really happy with each other."

"Yeah. I mean…I don't think it was perfect but…."

"Doesn't have to be perfect. Or…well…being together is perfect enough. For _me_ , anyway."

"Yeah? Well…I guess…maybe for me too."

And though he reached over for another handful of almonds, his eyes remained fixed with Juvia's. They really were the kind of eyes you could swim in, in every sense except for the literal sense.

But then there came a sudden rustling in the hedges and a black, hairy shape lurched out of the labyrinth. Tensing, Gray tore his gaze from Juvia's and hopped to his feet, stuffing the rest of the almonds in his hand into his mouth. Juvia hopped to her feet as well.

"Oh my goodness!" she exclaimed, as the newly-risen moonlight shone on the beast that had appeared, revealing a very wolfish creature that stood on its hindlegs, sniffing at the air and then locking its glowing amber eyes on them, regarding them hungrily. "A w—A _wolf_!" she choked.

"Whatever it is, it ain't gonna howl for nothin' but pain now." Gray tore off his shirt without another thought and then smacked his fist into the palm of his other hand.

Juvia sighed and wrapped up the rest of the almonds before she tucked it into her bag. "Suppose freezing him would be a good place to start."

The words were barely out of her mouth when Gray punched the ground, sending forth a mass of icy spikes.

"Ice-Geyser!"

The attack struck the wolf's feet just as it was about to lunge for them, causing it to cry out and snarl, but the ice trapped it before it could get away, some of the spikes lancing its clawed hindpaws for good measure. With a sigh, Juvia came in next with a Water Lock, encasing it the same swirling sphere of water that she had once trapped Gray in on their first encounter with each other.

The wolf creature quickly realized that where it was it couldn't breathe when it tried opening its mouth. It fixed Gray and Juvia with an angry amber eye before it began to thrash and struggle against the threat of drowning.

Even though this was a man-eating beast, it was painful to watch as the creature twitched until the last, his eyes rolling back as it went limp.

"I think you can release the Water Lock now," said Gray soberly.

"Okay." Juvia let out a breath and released her watery grip on the wolf's body and let it drop, the crystals of ice clamped onto its hind legs crumbling beneath it. The two of them hesitated before approaching the corpse, and Gray flinched inwardly at the way its tongue lolled out of its lifeless open mouth.

"Should probably cut off its head, just to be sure," he supposed.

"I agree," said Juvia with a nod. Then she lifted her eyebrow at him. "You wanna do the honors, or shall I?"

"Hmmmm, you can have the next one," said Gray with a grin. He fashioned an ice sword and lifted it high, cleaving the beast's head off with one stroke. Then they burned both head and body on a pyre of sorts until it was all nothing but ash.

"Will we need to burn every one we come across then?" Juvia asked as they watched the flesh and bones slowly curl black in the flames. "Seems a bit time-consuming, is all I'm saying. If Natsu were here, that'd be a different matter, but as it is…."

Gray scratched his chin, thinking a minute. "You're right, it does seem like a lot of work, especially since we've got no idea how many of these things there are. It's just…I've got this feeling…." And the bands on his arm that marked his Demon Slayer magic throbbed, and he reflexively grabbed at them, gripping his flesh.

This didn't escape Juvia's notice. "Gray?"

"It's fine, don't worry," Gray told her, giving her another reassuring smile. "Come on. Douse that fire, I think it's burned the body enough. We should push on into the labyrinth and see if we can finish this."

"All right." Though Juvia didn't sound entirely convinced, she seemed willing to let the subject go. For now, at least.

She swept her arm and cast a splash of water over the fire, smothering it in one, while Gray pulled his shirt back on.

Then something lurched in his stomach, his Demon Slayer bands throbbing again, more insistently. He spun around, saw the pile of ash and burnt wood behind Juvia rise up and twist and morph into the shape of a wolf again…a wolf hungry for blood.

"JUVIA!" Gray screamed, reaching out…but his mind was blank with fear.

Juvia spun around, and only had time to shriek before the resurrected wolf demon struck.


	4. Silver Dread

**Chapter Four**

 **Silver Dread**

Juvia put up her arm and the newly regenerated wolf swiped it faster than she could convert to her water body form. Yet at the same time, she swiped at it with her other arm, slicing through the creature's chest with her Water Slicer before it crashed to the ground, crashing through her, breaking her apart in a splash. She was in her human form when she hit the ground, but she was curled and clearly clutching her arm in pain.

 _Shit!_

Gray pounded the earth with his fist and launched one of the fastest Ice-Geyers he'd ever conjured, with the largest ice spikes he'd ever made with the maneuver as well, skewering the wolf in an instant. Then he collapsed to his hands and knees, panting as his spikes of ice turned red.

Any minute though, that thing was going to resurrect itself again, and they still had no idea what to do as far as killing it as even fire didn't appear to do the trick.

"Ow…."

"Juvia!" Gray gasped. He jumped back to his feet, rushed to her side, and dropped down next to her as she managed to sit up, still clutching her arm, which was clearly bleeding. "Are you all right? Here, lemme look at it."

"Mm, it's fine," Juvia told him, her voice strained even as she tried to smile. But she still offered him her arm for examination.

Gray took it in his hand and looked it over. Juvia shivered at his touch, but otherwise, she seemed too much in pain to make much of Gray interacting with her like this. Though, Gray actually shivered a little too, but then he felt that part of it was just seeing how bad Juvia was hurt.

It looked like the wolf only got her with one claw, but the slash itself looked deep.

 _Shit._

What he wouldn't give for Wendy to be there right now.

"Here."

Gray tore off his shirt again, but this time he had a function in mind for his cast-off clothing, as he rent the fabric to make strips to wrap around Juvia's arm for a temporary bandage until she could have her injury looked at by a professional.

When he tied it off, he looked up and saw Juvia had been watching him.

"We should head back," he said, aware that he was speaking more softly than he normally did.

"No, I'm fine, we can keep going," Juvia insisted, withdrawing her arm and rubbing at the wound with her other hand.

"Juvia…."

"I'm _fine_. Anyway, that thing's going to resurrect any minute."

And as if on cue, the corpse of the wolf started to move, shifting and growling as it struggled to free itself from how it was skewered on the ice spikes, its wounds healing over.

"Damn it," Gray muttered as he got to his feet. But by now, he had a good idea of what they were dealing with.

This was no ordinary wolf. It wasn't even your run-of-the-mill werewolf (if those things existed, which who knew, maybe they did?).

It was a _demon_.

Gray pushed back his hair as he worked on tapping into his Ice Demon Slayer powers. Though admittedly, he was a little nervous. This was really the first time he was doing this since the battle against Tartaros. Still, the senses he got from the Demon Slayer magic that had now become ingrained in into his brain left no room for doubt, in the way the bands throbbed on his arm, and what they all told him was before him.

Lucky for him, the wolf demon was still down, so he could still take it down in one move if he acted now. The move he intended to use he'd only used the once in the battle against Tartaros, but considering how effectively he'd managed to use it, along with Ice Demon's Zeroth Destruction Bow, he didn't have much of a problem using the spell again.

"Ice Demon's Zeroth Long Sword!"

And a great sword materialized, constructed out of the pale violet slaying ice born from the Demon Slayer Magic Silver Fullbuster had gifted to him. Still, it was heavier than the ice swords he usually used out of his ice-make magic, even Cold Excalibur, and he still needed two hands to hang onto and lift it. He managed it all the same, raising it high above his head and then bringing it down. Just as the wolf demon fixed its eyes with his and snarled, Gray decapitated it in one swing.

The moment its head was cleaved from its body, both head and body disintegrated to dust, and it was then Gray knew for certain that the thing was fully destroyed.

Then he took a deep breath as he let the Ice Demon Slayer magic recede within him. Then he turned and saw the way Juvia was looking at him.

And he realized that this was the first time she had ever seen him actually use his Demon Slayer power. Her wide blue eyes reflected that.

She wasn't afraid of him though. He could tell that too. Just a bit in awe, and not like how she usually was due to her infatuation with him. Luckily, the black marks that had appeared on him when he'd used Momento Mori hadn't made an appearance now. That made sense, given he'd only tapped into his Demon Slayer power for a moment, but still. If they had, would she actually regard him with fear then?

He closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and let it out before he reopened them. "Here, let me see your arm again," he said, his heart flooding with a raw warmth he couldn't identify at first. But as he stepped toward her and knelt beside her, and she held out her bandaged arm for him to examine again, he realized what it was.

It was something he had felt in a different way many times before, whenever he'd get concerned for the wellbeing of his friends in Fairy Tail. But this concern was full of a more exquisite gentleness that was new territory for him, though he wasn't as afraid of it as he thought he might be.

Of course, Juvia too was a friend and comrade, but…seeing her hurt like this…wanting to make sure she would be all right…that was different. And yet, he knew this was something that had been building up for a while.

Moreover, it felt right.

Juvia's constant professions of love for him had often been a little too much for him, but at the same time, he'd found himself blushing more than anything else, while at the same time his heart had pounded, as though yearning and eager for something, but his mind kept it at bay. Because as good as these feelings might be, the fact remained that they scared him, just a bit. Only because he'd never really felt something like this, _this strongly_ before.

This time though, he didn't hold back, or let only a trickle of those feelings into his heart before stoppering them as a defense mechanism. He let himself feel it all, as he held Juvia's forearm in his hands and looked over where she'd been hurt.

But with that came part of what he'd been dreading from these feelings, the anxiety that seeing that the bleeding wasn't stopping and already the bandage he'd given her out of his shirt was soaked through. Still, instead of running away, he confronted it. Juvia needed that from him, and whatever fears and doubts he had about his own feelings, he always made sure he came through for the people he cared about, and that always proved stronger than anything else.

There were a few times though, where he had felt like this, and hadn't shied away. The first time was when they had first met, and he'd managed to save her before she fell to her death. The second time was when Ultear Milkovich, the lost daughter of Ur, had been about to decapitate Juvia while she was unconscious on Tenrou Island, and he'd swept in on jet of ice and yanked her out of harm's way. The third time was later when Acnologia had attacked the island, and Gray, knowing that Juvia's leg was broken and she could only move on crutches, had made sure she hadn't gotten hurt, picking her up and carrying her when they'd had to make a run for it. The fourth time had been during the dragon attack on Crocus, when the little baby dragons had risen up over a pile of rubble and aimed their lasers at Juvia.

On that, he hadn't even had to think about it. He'd just shoved her out of the way and took the hit. At certain times, he even thought he could still feel the pain of being hit with those lasers, and then he'd shiver it off.

In the moment, it had hurt like hell, and he still had a vague memory of going from focusing only on making sure Juvia got out of the way (knowing that even in her Water Body form, because the threat was magical and not physical, she still wouldn't have survived the hit), to knowing nothing but agony running through him. And all his stuttering brain could think then was, _Shit_ , and then stab after stab after stab as he was hit again and again and again, until that last one right to his head, where everything had blinked out.

Then he'd floated for a bit, in a state similar to the one between dreaming and waking…and then he'd awoken, and it all felt like a dream. Well, a nightmare, anyway. But all too real, as he'd watched himself die.

Even so, even after the pain of finding out it was Ultear (after all this time desperate to find some way to make amends for her own sins) sacrificing the rest of the years of her own life that had made it possible for him to live through that, he had felt no regret where his dying for Juvia the first go-around was concerned. He'd have done it again, if he had to.

And when it had been Juvia's words that had helped lift his spirits when he'd been falling back into despair over what Ultear had done, all the more reason.

Juvia Lockser was a special young woman.

The world would be a darker place without her watery light.

 _His_ world…would be a darker place.

So now, he felt…he wanted this moment to start to change things. For her. And for him.

"We need to get this properly looked at," he said, already casting about for the remains of his discarded shirt to make new bandages. "How bad does it still hurt?"

"Not too bad," Juvia said, but as he used what scraps of shirt he had left to make new bandages, she hissed in a way he'd never heard her do before and that further alarmed him.

Gray dialed back how hastily he was rewrapping her injury, taking care now not to jar her in any way. When he finished, on an impulse he pressed her small hand in both of his larger ones, his fingers closing around it with the delicacy of trapping a butterfly. When he looked up at her again though, all he could managed to say in a strained whisper was, "Juvia…."

Juvia opened her mouth to respond to the lost look that was undoubtedly floating in his eyes, when she then seemed to notice something going on behind him. "Gray, look."

At first, Gray thought it might be the wolf demon managing to resurrect again even after he'd reduced it to ashes, but instead when he twisted around he saw a flicker of blue light, accompanied by a buzzing sound. Like a lamp's light sputtering.

Sensing something about it, Gray stood approached it, letting go of Juvia's hand. Then he reached out to it with a finger. He felt a slight shock, but it told him a lot. Mostly that it was a flaw in what was clearly a barrier, more than likely one that ran around the perimeter of the labyrinth.

It was definitely magic power though. Not curse power, like what demons used. Then again, there were no barrier techniques in curse power, according to what he'd read, at least none that could defend as effectively against that selfsame curse power like magic power could (though Zeref's precious demons would've argued otherwise). So a barrier from magic power was the only way to enclose a number of demons like the wolf demons that appeared to be getting out through this flaw.

"What the…?"

"What is it, Gray?"

"It's a barrier," Gray told her, turning toward her. "A magic barrier. But there's a flaw. Like…a hole. That's how these wolf demons've been getting out. Curse power doesn't have any techniques that'd work." He scratched his chin thoughtfully. "Maybe if we could find a way to fix it…." He glanced back at Juvia, and saw that she was looking a little paler than she did before. "First, though…."

But Juvia was already getting to her feet, still clutching her injured arm. "All right," she said, "well then, I guess we should…."

As soon as she got to her feet however her knees wobbled and then buckled. Before Gray could catch her she collapsed to the ground in a dead faint.  
" _Juvia_!" Gray dropped beside her again, leaned over her and tapped the side of her face, trying to wake her up. "Juvia? Hey, Juvia, c'mon, wake up. Wake up, please. _Shit_."

"What's happened here?"

Gray looked up, and saw none other than Mayor Rosamunde and her butler, as if they'd seen what had happened from the Rosamunde mansion and had come down themselves to investigate. For a moment, he was relieved if only because seeing her gave him hope that she and or her butler would know what to do to help Juvia, given the circumstances.

"Made a kill," said Gray, getting to his feet and nodding to the pile of ashes that had once been the wolf demon.

Mayor Rosamunde stopped short and glanced between Gray and the beast. Then she raised her eyebrows at him. "Demon Slayer Magic?" she asked.

"Yeah," Gray affirmed.

"I see," said Mayor Rosamunde.

"And we've found how the others have been getting out and attacking townspeople." Gray gestured to the glitchy looking hole in the magical barrier that enclosed the labyrinth.

"I see." Mayor Rosamunde squinted at the hole.

"What do you recommend, miss?" her butler asked her, bending low to her ear.

"Let me think." Then Rosamunde turned back to Gray. "Do you think you can repair it?"

"I can see what I can do," said Gray.

"In that case, allow me to assist you with that." And Rosamunde nodded to her butler, who straightened back up.

Gray stared at the wiry man. "You?"

"Yes, sir," said the butler primly.

"So…you two were already trying to take care of this on your own?" Gray asked both the butler and the mayor.

"We weren't the ones who cast the barrier, but its presence was obvious to us when the labyrinth first appeared," answered Rosamunde, and then her narrow eyes fell on Juvia, supine and senseless on the ground. "What happened to her?"

"Can you help her?" Gray asked, not without urgency as he knelt back down beside her. At least she still seemed to be breathing all right.

"Was she bitten?" Rosamunde inquired, her small hands behind her back. "By the wolf demon, I mean."

Gray frowned. "No…just a scratch," he finally answered, slow and wary at something he sensed underneath her question that felt…off.

"Very good," said Rosamunde in a low voice, which Gray took to mean that Juvia's condition could easily be remedied. "Rambert," she ordered the butler, and the butler automatically stepped forward and scooped Juvia up into his arms.

Gray stood again. "Where're you taking her?" he asked even more guardedly, as it further occurred to him why it was that someone who could cast a magical barrier had no idea that there was a hole in it. Or how a hole had even been torn through it in the first place.

As Rambert turned and started carrying Juvia back without answering, Rosamunde said, "To my mansion. I have something there that will help her to heal from her injury. In the meantime, if you would be so kind as to assist Rambert in repairing the hole once he returns?"

"Sure," said Gray, and made to follow Rambert.

But then Rosamunde stepped in front of him, barring his way. Well, she was so small that he could easily push her aside, but initially he reacted out of the courtesy he still felt he should maintain and stopped.

"I'd like you to stay here, if you please," the mayor ordered him.

"But—"

"You'll only get in the way,"

Gray curled his hands into fists. "I can't just leave her."

Rosamunde beetled her brow. Of course she was too young to understand. Still….

"What is she to you?" she finally asked Gray.

"She's my friend," Gray said at once. It was easier than saying, "She's the girl I care for in a way I never thought I could ever let myself care about a girl, but right now I'm not keen on letting that show, given how uncertain I am myself about how I feel."

Rosamunde meanwhile just raised an eyebrow. "Just a friend?"

"I'm not abandoning her," Gray added unwaveringly to emphasize his point.

"You aren't abandoning her," said Rosamunde with a sigh, as if Gray were being overdramatic. "But I need you out of the way for this," she added with a note of authority that sounded well beyond a child as young as she seemed to be. Even so, she seemed to feel she needed to add, "I will not yield on this point, Mr. Fullbuster." And with that, she turned on her heel and flounced after her butler with an admirable regality.

At first, Gray considered just saying, "Screw it," and finding a way to sneak into the mansion so he could see for himself that Juvia would be all right. But then he noticed something out of the corner of his eye, a shadow that darted in and out of sight within the labyrinth.

He spared a quick look at the mayor's mansion.

"Wait for me, Juvia," he muttered under his breath. "I'll be back."

Looking left and right, Gray went into the labyrinth and followed the shadow, the Demon Slayer bands on his arm prickling again.

* * *

Juvia's eyelids were so heavy she could hardly lift them open at first, but with an effort, she managed to crawl out of the darkness of unconsciousness back into wakefulness and blink her eyes open.

The first thing she was aware of was that she seemed to be lying in a very comfortable bed. And then saw several multicolored lacrimas floating nearby, and that they were all connected to her arm where she'd been hurt by the wolf demon.

Which triggered her memory of what had happened just before she'd fainted. The wolf demon taking a swipe at her, the way Gray had seen to her injury by using strips of his stripped-off shirt to make a bandage for her, and then how they'd seen the hole in the magical barrier around the labyrinth before she'd suddenly felt dizzy and ill and had fainted.

Lifting up the blankets though, when she saw her arm, the strips of Gray's shirt had been removed, leaving nothing but the tubes stuck in there connected to the multicolored lacrimas.

"What the…? Gray…?"

There had been such anxiety in his eyes for her wellbeing. Just remembering it was rather affecting and made Juvia's heart flutter and her face flush hot.

Where could he be now though?

She lifted herself up onto her elbows, only for someone to sweep in and gently push her back down into the pillows of the bed she was occupying. When she looked up confusedly, she realized it was Mayor Rosamunde's butler.

"Now, now, Miss Lockser, you need to rest," the butler insisted as he came and sat at her bedside. "You _have_ been injured by a wolf demon, after all."

Juvia acquiesced, as the butler appeared to know what he was doing. "Do you happen to know where my friend has gone?" she asked, thinking perhaps he was still having a word with Mayor Rosamunde, which would explain how the butler knew that what they were dealing with specifically was a wolf demon.

The butler lifted the blankets to expose Juvia's injured arm again. As he took her arm in his hand, he said, "I must go meet Mr. Fullbuster," he told her, examining the deep laceration in her skin, peering at it more closely.

Juvia couldn't help but notice how angry it looked, and how much it throbbed, like it had its own heartbeat. It was more than a little unsettling.

"He'll need my help to patch up the hole in the magical barrier around the labyrinth," the butler went on.

"Oh…. Um…Mister uh…."

"Please, call me Rambert."

"Rambert. Yes. Um…."

"Does this still hurt? The laceration?"

"A little." _A lot._

"Very well." Then Rambert opened a drawer and removed a syringe already filled with a measured amount of a silver liquid. "Here. This'll help with the pain."

And before Juvia could protest, Rambert stuck the needle in her arm and injected the medicine into her veins.

She felt the hit immediately, a sort of whoosh blowing through her head, which caused her to feel dizzy again, like the room was spinning, even though she was lying down, her body relatively still.

"It's all right," Rambert assured her, though his voice sounded like it was coming from under water now, as he flicked the empty syringe into a trash bin. "It's better if you just let it put you to sleep…."

"Rambert?"

"Ah, Miss Rosamunde…."

"Remember, when we collect the ashes…."

The mayor's words were drowned into unclarity after that. Juvia's eyelids were growing heavy. But as Rambert stood, she managed to catch a glimpse of what looked like Mayor Rosamunde entering the room, and thought she saw the young girl's shape shift, twisting like a cloud of smoke, but she couldn't really be sure…as she fell back into the dark depths of sleep, with her last thought naturally being of her beloved Gray.

* * *

It didn't take long for Gray to get himself turned around in the labyrinth. Initially he'd used that darting shadow as his compass, more or less, but even with his Demon Slayer power, he'd managed to lose track of it as he tried to keep it from noticing that he was following it, while at the same time trying to get a good look at it.

He was pretty sure it was another one of those wolf demons though.

He stopped and considered the Demon Slayer bands on his arm. Of _course_ he needed more practice.

Then his nose twitched, and he followed that down a path where his ears picked up the sounds of vicious snarling, like a dog tearing into a hunk of meat.

Gray's stomach turned.

He slowed his pace, pulling everything inward so that when he stepped, he hardly made a sound, and when he breathed, that hardly stirred the air at all. He had to be at least as quiet as a shadow, if not as silent as one.

Though being as _silent_ as a shadow would be cooler.

He forgot this though as he saw new shadows up ahead, cast upon a wall of labyrinth hedge that shone in the rising moonlight. Something very large, and very hairy, waving erratically about like something digging into another something on the ground. And the ravenous snarling and snorting got louder, as did the squelchy undertone of sharp teeth chewing into something both soft and crunchy.

For a second, Gray froze, forgetting to breathe altogether. And then, he peered around the corner.

And there was another wolf demon.

That wasn't what scared him though.

It was those eating sounds that threatened to turn his stomach again, and this time, he just might vomit.

For as the wolf demon snerted and paused, hackles raised, sensing another heartbeat nearby, it then lifted its great head and stared Gray down with violent red and yellow eyes, its fur a lush shade of golden-blond.

Like Rosamunde's hair.

And there was a bloody lock of golden hair dangling from its mouth.

And at its feet, a mangled mess of bone, flesh, muscle and fat wrapped up in the tatters of a little pink taffeta dress.

"The hell…?" Gray croaked.

None of this made any sense.

At the moment though, his priority was taking care of the hungry beast in front of him.

He called upon his Demon Slayer power again, and used Ice Demon Zeroth's Long Sword like before, and once again vanquished his foe in a blast of ice and ash. Breathing hard, he little reveled in his victory as he turned then and considered the bloody mess of what to some might appear to be the corpse of a certain little girl posing as mayor of Lupine in the place of her deceased father.

And whether that father was even deceased—at least in the traditional sense—was debatable too. That or, if he _was_ deceased, it was debatable that the circumstances of his death had been fully disclosed to the public.

Because it was debatable now, as he reached down and picked up the bloody mess of the taffeta dress, to which bits of bone and hair and blood clung, that the little girl he and Juvia had spoken to was really Rosamunde.

Then the bottom dropped out of his stomach, and his mouth went dry.

Juvia.

She was up there.

In that mansion.

Alone.

The dropped bit of torn dress hadn't even hit the ground before Gray was already halfway to tearing back out of the labyrinth.

* * *

A terrible darkness started to follow Juvia in her sleep, one that burrowed deep inside her head in a wave of pain that threatened to split her head in two.

It got so bad that it woke her up, and there were tears in her eyes. She breathed as if she'd been running too, the sheets and blankets twisted around her body like she'd been thrashing.

At the same time though, she felt very heavy.

And then the pain in her head started to spread from there down to her neck, to her chest, flowing through to the rest of her body, like little needles crawling through her veins and bones and skin.

She let out a whimper and struggled to sit up, determined to fight whatever was going on inside of her. She gave a cursory glance up at the floating colored lacrimas, glaring at them before reaching over and yanking the tubing out of her arm that connected them to the injury from the wolf demon.

The moment she did, the lacrimas turned clear and colorless, the tubes hanging limp.

Her forehead was on fire, like she had a fever. And her stomach roiled with nausea. She wasn't quite to the point where she felt the need to throw up, but she was getting there, and the dizziness wasn't helping.

"Gray," she muttered, and despite what Rambert had said, she bat the dangling lacrimas tubes out of the the way and swung her legs over the edge of the bed, and then staggered, shaking, to her feet.

Only to realize in the sudden of draft of air that she was entirely naked.

"Oh!"

In spite of how ill she felt, her face flushed beet red with embarrassment as she wrapped her arms around herself in an attempt to cover her exposed breasts as much as humanly possible. And already in her head she was imagining Gray finding her like this and the very thought made steam blow out of her ears.

 _"Juvia! You're naked! So very naked!"_

 _Nosebleed._

 _Faint._

 _"Gray, my love!"_

Juvia shook the whirlwind fantasy off. "Jeez, I've got to find clothes, fast!"

Searching about the room they'd put her in, and finding no trace of her own clothes anywhere, her eyes then fell on what looked like a wardrobe across from the bed. She dashed over to it and used one hand to fling the doors to it open.

Only to find it empty.

"Ugh, are you kidding me?!"

Huffing, and then hit with a wave of nausea where she actually tasted bile in the back of her throat, her hot skin turning clammy, Juvia resigned to ripping the sheets off of the bed and wrapping herself up in those as a temporary measure to maintain her modesty.

At the very least, as she wrapped herself up in the sheets like a makeshift sleeveless dress that left her shoulders bare while she held the gathered bunched ends of them in one fist, the sensation of needles flowing painfully through her body was subsiding some, leaving her throbbing dully all over instead.

But her heart still hammered hard in her chest.

She took a moment to gather her thoughts as she stood in the middle of the sparse bedroom. Now that she'd found a way to cover herself until she could find her own clothes—or any clothes at all, whatever came first—she had to consider what to do next. Of course she had to find out what all was going on here, but she was in a building she was little familiar with. She supposed she could see if she could find Mayor Rosamunde in her office for a start.

As embarrassing as that would be given her state of dress.

Or lack thereof.

Then she remembered that syringe of silver liquid Rambert had jabbed her with.

She wondered if there were more of those in that drawer beside the bed where he'd taken out the one he'd used on her.

She hobbled over to the nightstand and pulled the drawer open with her free hand.

There, shining in the soft gold light of the bulb that swung from the ceiling, there was a whole row of them in a velvet lining. Six of them. There was one empty space though for a seventh, presumably formerly occupied by the one with which Rambert had stuck her. Tremulously, she plucked up the next one and held the glass syringe carefully in her fingers. The silver liquid within _was_ pretty, with the way it glittered and shimmered, swirling with tumbling sparkles.

Still, it was more than a little perturbing that she had no idea what it was. She was no doctor in any sense of the word, but she was pretty sure this wasn't anything found in conventional medicine.

And then she noticed something different about her arm…and realizing what it was she gave a yelp and dropped the syringe. The glass of it shattered, the silver liquid burst free, spilling across the floor, as Juvia stared up from her arm to the image of her face in the full-length mirror in the corner.

Along certain contours all over her body, the skin had turned silver. The spreading patches of the color shined with a pearlescence that was both beautiful and horrifying.

"What's…happening to me…?" she gasped.

Then the nausea came back in full force. Her knees buckled, and she collapsed, right before her stomach heaved again and this time, something came up.

She vomited a mixture of bile and silver liquid that bloomed into a pool around her on the floor, mixing with the silver liquid spilled from the broken syringe.

After she'd finished retching all she could though, her skin continued to change color.

And Juvia screamed.

* * *

When Gray finally reached the opening to the labyrinth that faced the mayor's mansion, he found none other than the mayor herself, accompanied by Rambert, standing just outside of it, as if they'd been waiting, the hole flickering just above them.

Gray stopped short to catch his breath from running, drawing the back of his arm across his forehead. "Mayor…Rosamunde…Rambert," he panted.

"Mr. Fullbuster." Mayor Rosamunde nodded curtly.

"Come to…help with patching up the barrier then…?" Gray glanced at Rambert.

Rambert though simply coughed into his hand, and for the first time since meeting him, the wiry man looked quite uncomfortable.

Nonplussed, Gray shook his head and turned back to the mayor. "Whatever," he sighed. "Is Juvia okay?"

"Oh you needn't worry about your partner. We've only just begun her treatment regimen, after all." And then Mayor Rosamunde smiled, and for the first time since meeting her, fully. It was unsettling on her, to say the least. There was something…bestial underneath it.

Gray swallowed as the hairs on the back of his neck stood on end. "What do you mean?" His eyes flicked from Rosamunde to Rambert.

Rambert was still unhelpfully avoiding meeting his eye.

"What's going on, _Mayor_?" Gray demanded of Rosamunde on a bit of a suspicious snarl. He folded his arms across his bare chest, his Demon Slayer bands itching again. This time he was going to pay attention more properly to what his powers were trying to tell him.

Mayor Rosamunde shook her head, examined her fingernails nonchalantly, heaving a sigh of her own as though she were bored. "Damn it all. You just had to be a _Demon Slayer_ , didn't you?" She glanced up at Rambert, eyes narrowed in ire. "You couldn't have found a way to make sure that a Demon Slayer wizard didn't end up taking the job when we posted it?"

"Forgive me…ma'am," was all Rambert muttered, again, averting his eyes.

Rosamunde sighed a second time, this time in resignation, it seemed. "Oh well. Can't be helped now. You have the phial with the ash sample?"

"I do, ma'am."

"Very well."

"What the _hell_ is going on here?!" Gray growled, taking a step forward. He was this close to grabbing that girl by the scruff of her neck and shaking her, courtesy be damned. With each passing second, the sympathy he'd previously harbored for the girl was waning. Especially if this girl wasn't even really a girl at all.

"Careful, Demon Slayer," Rosamunde warned. "At the very least, you don't appear to be quite as experienced as most I've encountered of your kind in the past."

Gray felt the blood drain from his face, only for his pounding heart to revel in the realization that actually he should just take the Ice Demon's Zeroth Long Sword right now and slice Rosamunde in half with it.

Rambert caught his eye then, and seemed to sense what Gray was about to do, and his eyes went wide.

In that moment, before any of them could do anything, the night air split with a woman's terrified scream.

A scream Gray recognized.

 _Juvia._

It froze him to his bones and to his heart. He had _never_ heard her scream like that, but he _knew_ it was her.

"Rambert," Rosamunde prompted, face dangerously livid.

And, as though it pained him, but still with a strong conviction, Rambert began to change his shape.

Gray stared.

Once again…he might already be too late to save a person he cared about from a terrible fate.

That seemed to be the Fullbuster curse…to be too damn late.

* * *

 _Outside it was getting darker and colder, and after dinner found Silver feeding the flames in the fireplace, knelt by the hearth. Meanwhile, Mika was tsking Gray as she wiped his mouth with a wet washcloth, he having gotten a fair amount of the icing from the chocolate cake she'd baked on his face._

 _"There, got it all!" Mika declared._

 _That was when they felt the first shake. A shake that seemed to stop time as all three Fullbusters—as everything—went still._

 _Then there came a second shake. This one spurred Silver into action. He leapt to his feet and dashed back into the kitchen, where he found Mika and Gray. Mika had pulled Gray into her arms, and they were both looking up fearfully at the way sawdust had been shaken from the ceiling rafters._

 _"Mom, what is it?" Gray asked, clinging a little closer to her._

 _"I don't know, baby." Mika looked at Silver. "Honey?"_

 _When Silver saw his apprehension reflected in his wife's eyes, his next thought was to get them both under cover._

 _But then they heard the roar. A roar that broke the world, tearing through their minds._

 _Silver clapped his hands over his ears, and was vaguely aware of Mika and Gray doing the same, Gray turning and burrowing into the shelter of his mother._

 _"Ow, it hurts!" he cried. "Mom, my ears, they hurt!"_

 _And then it stopped, after what felt like an age, and a painful one. All three of them tentatively lifted their heads, waiting._

 _The world held its breath._

 _"Mom…is it gone?" Gray whispered._

 _But there was another shake and the loud crack of wood splintering. Mika took a step back, hugging Gray to her so tight it was almost painful, staring horrified up at the break in the ceiling. Then she gave a small cry and thrust Gray away from her as hard as she could right before the path of roof directly above her fell in. Gray barely had a moment to recover from being thrown across the floor before she was gone, leaving only a scream behind before Silver could reach her._

 _"MIKA!"_

 _"MOMMY!"_

 _The world shook again, Silver and Gray barely shielded by what little was left of the roof of their house. They both cowered, crying out as there tumbled the tumult of another thunderous, bone-shaking roar, and then they saw him through the hole in the roof._

 _A demon the size of a mountain, laying waste to their village, the air rife with screams and cries of agony._

 _Like Hell had arrived and taken over their little village._

 _Silver covered his mouth, overcome. Then his gaze fell to the pile of rubble, the huge chunk of their house that had crashed down on Mika, and saw…_

 _…her arm…_

 _…her wedding ring flickering on her finger in the light of the burning fires all around them…_

 _…it was so still…_

 _…and there was a thread of blood running along it…._

 _He wanted to scream and vomit at the same time._

 _"Mika…" he choked._

 _Gray was shaking dust and debris out of his hair when he saw what Silver had just seen._

 _"Gray…!" Silver tried to call out, but Gray was already on his feet, his eyes filling, bright with a pain a child like him shouldn't have to know._

 _"Mommy!" he wailed._

 _But just as he was about to run, the world shook again, and rocked the remains of the Fullbuster house. One more shake and it would give, and pulverize little Gray to death the way Mika had been._

 _Icy fear ran through Silver's stomach like a blade as he screamed, "GRAY, MOVE!"_

 _He tried to reach for him, to get him out of harm's way, to not fail to protect him like he'd just failed to protect his wife._

 _But before he could, the weight of the world crashed down upon him instead, plunging him into pain and darkness, crunched beneath heavy, unforgiving stone…and the last thing he heard before the darkness crushed him in its suffocating embrace was Gray screaming, "DADDY!"_


	5. Family

**Chapter Five**

 **Family**

 _Nieve Lockser._

 _They said he'd held power over the falling snow, that he could sculpt winter wonderlands, or cast avalanches, or bring about a raging blizzard that could freeze over an entire village. But falling in love with Belle Deleaux changed things for him. He'd met her by a river on his travels from the north, found her bathing in it as a means to escape the summer heat. She'd broken the surface of the water and tossed back her blue hair, throwing sparkling droplets into the air, and that had been enough to render Nieve undone. One of those moments of "love at first sight"._

 _Those who knew her had nicknamed her Belle the Raindrop. She loved the water, to be sure, but more than that, she had the power to influence the weather, especially where summoning rain was concerned. In times of drought in her home of Amaryllis, she was their savior, bringing rain when it would not come on its own._

 _Her heart though was another matter. Despite Nieve's initial professions of love, Belle wasn't entirely interested. It wasn't that she didn't like Nieve as a person, but she was rather closed-up as a person. But Nieve grew on her, as he settled down in Amaryllis, and eventually, when he asked her to marry him, she'd grown quite enamored of him and said "yes" on the spot._

 _So it was in Amaryllis that Nieve put down roots, and it wasn't long after that that Belle became pregnant with their first child. They had a baby girl just a year after they were married on a peacefully rainy day. Glowing with pride, they named their precious daughter Juvia for the lovely rain outside, her hair as blue as her mother's._

 _Nobody could tell Juvia how it was exactly that her parents had died. But Juvia often wondered if their untimely deaths and her mother's power over the rain had culminated in the curse that had befallen her, the curse of rainfall wherever she went. Thinking of it this way, in the beginning it gave her the comforting sense that her mother—that both her parents—were keeping close, trying to watch over her._

 _However, she came to believe that less and less when all the rain seemed to do was chase away the people she tried to befriend. And with every sad drip-drop, a little more of her happiness trickled away, until she grew bitter, and eventually refused going forward to embrace and believe in things like love and friendship and family._

 _And with the power that she held over and gleaned from the water, from all water, she grew dangerous in equal measure, a force of nature itself to be reckoned with, as fearsome as the looming thunderheads that brought her torrent of rain, her rage as tumultuous as the thunder._

 _As it turned out though, when she learned how to embrace love and friendship and family once more, this power of hers did not diminish in the slightest. In fact, quite the contrary, it made her even stronger, and, when angered, far more dangerous._

 _And her enemies learned just how dangerous in the worst possible way._

* * *

Gray staggered back at Rambert's shift from a humanoid form to one that resembled a giant raven twice the size of a horse and with the leathery wings of a bat.

"Oh crap," he muttered, pushing back his hair as he got a hold of himself. And with a cursory glance, he was able to channel his Demon Slayer Magic again and glean an idea of this demon's powers and attributes. Then he summoned the great Ice Demon Slayer Zeroth's Long Sword again and held it aloft. "Bring it on, demon," he dared, tearing off his shirt with his free hand.

The bat-winged yet birdlike black demon gave a raucous cry that grated on the ears as it spread those wings, ready to spring at Gray. And Gray was prepared to run it right through with the sword in his hand. He had no idea if there had ever really been a human named Rambert, all he knew was that such a human was definitely not here.

This was a demon, through and through.

Though he could tell too that it was one that could've matched wits with Mard Geer Tartaros, or, barring that, one of his minions. Gray only hoped he wouldn't have to shield against something like Momento Mori this time: he couldn't exactly afford to have those black marks appear on his skin like before.

Though it hadn't happened since that day, but he constantly feared that it would. Constantly. Hence his getting that book on Demon Slayer Magic, and how disturbed he was reading that part in the book about the black marks being more prevalent on one who learned to use the magic too quickly—like himself.

More importantly, he feared that it could to harm or frighten Juvia.

On the other hand though, he was prepared to do whatever it took to take this particular opponent down. After all, Juvia was stuck up in that mansion somewhere, and to get to her, he had to get through this beast first.

Meanwhile, out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Mayor Rosamunde withdraw to the side and disappear, which increased the urgency with which he needed to take care of the demon in front of him. Before Mayor Rosamunde could do anything to harm Juvia while Rambert the Demon kept him busy.

Gray hefted the Ice Demon Slayer Zerroth's Long Sword in both hands and assumed a fighter's stance. "Come on, you demon bastard! Fight me!"

Rambert the demon gave another menacing squawk, and then flew forward at the same time that Gray swung down the sword.

* * *

Juvia's skin had turned completely silver, even as she now sat slumped in a pool of silver on the floor that she'd just vomited up. She was shaking, hyperventilating, and hugging the sheets she had wrapped around her otherwise naked body.

Her heart hammered in her chest.

But at the very least, she was still breathing.

And she was no longer in pain.

Whatever had been done to her, the goal had been some kind of transformation. Maybe now it was complete. She really hoped it was, though she had a bad feeling deep down that it wasn't.

Slowly, on trembling, unsteady legs, she grabbed the edge of the bed and used this to push herself up to her feet. Her knees knocked, but she managed to stay upright, even as she staggered away from the bed. She took it slow as she tried to find her footing with the ripples of shock and adrenaline still flooding her body, and managed to get to the doorknob and grasp a hold of it.

After she yanked the door open, she stepped out of the room. Feeling lonely and admittedly scared in the large house, she slowly crept down the hall, the sheets trailing behind her like a train.

She didn't get far before she turned a corner and found Rosamunde at the other end, as if she'd been waiting for her. On instinct, Juvia drew back at the look in the girl's eyes, afraid that her suspicions that something was up with her had indeed been founded.

"Miss Lockser," said Rosamunde, with a smirk that looked evil on a child. "It's good to see that you're up and about. I do hope you weren't thinking of leaving. You should be entering the Second Stage just about now."

Fear leapt up in Juvia's stomach. "S-Second…s-stage…?"

 _What in Earthland could possibly come next?_

She shuddered inwardly to think of it.

"I mean that soon you should be able to join my kin in the Labyrinth."

"Your kin? Wait a minute, if I'm…about to 'join your kin', as you say, why isn't your skin silver?"

"Oh, but it is."

And Rosamunde waved a hand, and seemed to tear away a glamor of sorts that had been concealing the true color of her skin. It really was silver.

Juvia gaped. "What the hell?!" she exclaimed, reacting much in the way Gray probably would have. And she suspected that he was already aware by now that Rosamunde was not exactly on the up and up.

"Those of the silver skin are gifted the power of metamorphosis." Rosamunde spread her arms out wide in a dramatic gesture. "The blood of a human becomes one with that of a demon—the wolf demon—and is free to drag their prey into the depths of the labyrinth and devour their fill."

This was ten levels of creepy. It was too much like Tartaros, and the way they'd tried to turn people like Mirajane, as well as Minerva of Sabertooth, into demonesses.

"Who are you?" Juvia croaked. "You're not Rosamunde…are you?"

Rosamunde grinned, all teeth, and sharp-looking teeth at that. "I assure you, I am. But I was freed from the shadow of my father."

Juvia put a hand to her mouth, and then her eyes slid to the window behind her, and she actually caught a glimpse of Gray, far across the lawns, fighting with a raven-like demon with the wings of a bat just outside of the labyrinth. "Gray!" She put one hand to the window pane, her other hand still clutching the sheet around her.

The bat-winged raven demon flapped its enormous wings, producing a gust of wind that knocked Gray off his feet. Then, when he was down, the demon planted one clawed foot on Gray's chest, pressing him into the ground, crushing him—

"STOP!" Juvia whipped around and pleaded with Rosamunde. "Make that demon _stop_! It's going to kill him!"

Rosamunde pretended to be interested in her fingernails, unconcerned. "You could easily thwart that beast…if you embrace…your new power."

Juvia stared. And then she glared darkly, anger coming off her in waves, like hot steam off of boiling water. "You'd have me…turn into one of _your_ kind…?" Her voice shook with barely contained ire.

"What?" Rosamunde quirked a confused eyebrow. "Oh, I see. So, you'd let him die just because you don't want to turn into a wolf demon? I thought you seemed the sort of person who would do _anything_ to save the one they love." Then she smirked. "Are you embarrassed to let him see you like that?"

"No, it's not that."

Her anger overcoming her fear, Juvia adjusted the sheet around her until she managed to find a way to tie it so it wouldn't slide off of her body, wearing it as a kind of makeshift short-skirted, sleeveless dress with a pair of long tie tails trailing behind her. And the moment she made the final tie-off, thunder clapped outside, and daylight from the window behind her darkened as heavy rainclouds gathered as if out of nowhere.

Rosamunde actually seemed genuinely taken aback at this development.

Or perhaps it was because of the dangerous expression that had settled on Juvia's face as her mouth spread into a feral grin of her own. Manic, and dark with the threat of retribution.

"Oh, I would, _Mayor_. And testing that theory…was your first…and biggest mistake."

And just as lightning struck, Juvia did the same.

* * *

 _Shit._

This was beyond lame.

He was a Demon Slayer, wasn't he? A new one, but he'd taken Mard Geer Tartaros, hadn't he? (Sure, with Natsu's help, but that was beside the point.)

Yet here he was, squirming under the claw of a bat-winged raven demon, trying to get a hold of his sword that had been flung a few feet away from…just out of his reach.

The raven demon bent its beak toward his ear, and squawked, raucous and loud, tearing through Gray's brain. And then the beast pressed down more on his chest, crushing him.

"Not…killing me…that easy…demon," he growled.

It was getting harder to breathe though, and any second his ribs and spine were going to snap like twigs—

But then a klaxon of thunder rolled over them, so loud and powerful that it made Gray's pressed bones shake. Dark clouds swirled overhead, lightning flashed, and a deluge of rain fell from the sky, drenching both Gray and the raven demon in seconds.

 _Juvia._

Wherever she was, trapped in that mansion, she was fighting back. He could feel it, because only she could cause a tempest like this out of nowhere.

Thinking of her fighting back, an increase in strength surged in Gray's blood. He gave another savage yell and unleashed an explosion of his power, flash-freezing everything around him within a thirty-foot radius in the violet-tinted ice of the Ice Demon Slayer—including the raven demon pinning him down. The fact that it was raining made this flash freeze all the easier.

The raven demon gave another harsh cry that was cut off by the ice that enveloped it. And with it being demon slayer ice, it started sapping him of his strength the moment it closed over him, and at last, Gray was able to wriggle free from underneath his claw with some minimal effort.

Soaked in rainwater, he crawled over to his sword, grasped the hilt, and clambered to his feet. Then he turned on the frozen demon, pointing his sword at it.

"Okay…" he panted, "now I've got you, you sonofabitch…."

Then he smacked the hilt of the ice demon slayer sword against the head of the raven demon, knocking off just the ice down to its neck.

The raven demon squawked and waved its head back and forth as it struggled to break free of the rest of the ice—until Gray slid the blade of his sword underneath the raven's throat. The moment he did that, the demon went completely still.

Now it was his turn to lean toward the demon's ear, but instead of yelling into it, he whispered lividly: "Now…you're gonna help me…or I swear…I will slice your head clean off your neck…. You get that?"

In this state, Rambert the Raven Demon might not have been able to communicate with words, but his demon eyes said enough as they quivered in palpable fear.

At which Gray gave a beastly grin beneath another crash of thunder and flicker of lightning. "All right then," he said, before he smacked the hilt of his sword against the rest of the ice imprisoning Rambert.

The raven demon was so weakened by the demon slayer ice that it simply collapsed as the ice that had cocooned it shattered. It couldn't even flap its bat-like wings as it twitched feebly on the ground for a second before it was forced to escape into its human form as its demon powers continued draining away from Gray's ice.

Once returned to his human form, Rambert lifted his head, glaring at the point of Gray's sword, but just the same, he made no attempt to fight back. "You are indeed an inexperienced Demon Slayer," he growled, "but still…a powerful one. Pray that you don't let that burden eat you alive from within," he added with a dark smile.

Gray frowned but left the insinuated jibe alone. He didn't have time to rise to this filth's bait. "Get up," he ordered. "You're gonna help me save Juvia."

"Your companion?" Rambert struggled somewhat to his feet, his butler's uniform in rags. "You certainly care for her deeply, don't you?"

"She's my friend, what do you think?" Gray told him at once, keeping ahold of the Zerroth's Long Sword as a precaution.

"Oh, I meant something more."

"Shut up."

Yet he sensed something soften in the demon as the two of them splashed through the muddy sodden grass towards the mansion—Gray with purpose and the threat of unleashing his power again, the demon with defeat.

"That was the reason I made Lady Rosamunde what she is," Rambert confessed when they reached the rose garden. "It's what Lady Rosamunde had me give to your friend, what I gave Lady Rosamunde…to save her. The power of a demon. Wolf demon, that is. Obviously."

This gave Gray pause, and he gaped at the butler. "The power of a demon…to _save_ her?" he choked out. His Demon Slayer ears couldn't believe what he was hearing. After all, from what he'd understood, during the battle against Tartaros they'd tried doing something torturously similar to Mirajane in their lab (not realizing of course that she had a demon soul already, not to mention a little brother ready to tear apart the enemy limb-from-limb for harming his sister).

But Rambert gave Gray a rueful, humorless sigh and then looked away. "Her father…he…." He narrowed his eyes. "He… _hurt_ her…several times he nearly _killed_ her, his own _daughter_ …and…as a demon myself…seeing that…well…I _am_ a demon, so I _do_ act very much on impulse." He raised his eyebrows then, almost sly. "I gave her the power to tear him apart and give him what he deserved.

"Of course, now that she had been transfigured into a demon, I couldn't have her running loose whenever the need to transform overtook her. Unfortunately, I lacked the foresight to take into consideration the possibility that giving that kind of power to a girl that young meant that that power would undoubtedly become used irresponsibly. So, there was the labyrinth, which has been a part of Rose Manor's grounds for generations. Now it became a haven for her when she couldn't contain her new wolf demon nature. I even convinced a small pack of wolf demons to join her there, and they became a sort of surrogate family to her. I was proud of that. Moreover, I had…grown rather fond of her. I know I act as her butler, and caretaker in the guise of a professional role but…I've seen the kindness she's still managed to retain in her brief moments of lucidity….

"That said, I was also aware that these demons were not nearly as rational as myself, and thus the barrier. But with the hole that managed to form in the barrier, of course Rosamunde and her fellow wolf demons started to get in and out, and would slake their bloodlust on the townspeople. And as I've already explained, the barrier was magic, so, I had no power to do anything about its flaws. I'd only had the power to put it up as the source of the magic was a device, so it required no magical ability personally on my part. Still, things were getting out of hand with all of the deaths, and Rosamunde's personality shifting, twisting into something malevolent and inhuman.

"I see."

In spite of the growing anger expanding within his chest, Gray managed to maintain his composure. He was man enough to know that at the very least, now wasn't the time to pound people senseless—much as he wanted to do just that to this demon in front of him.

That and…there was something to be said that he had acted out of concern to a small girl who, from the sound of it, had been under the thumb of an abusive father, the mother nowhere to be found, either dead or simply gone.

If nothing else, Gray couldn't fault him for that, demon or no.

Then there came a savage yell from within the mansion, and Gray and Rambert both looked up, and then at each other.

"That doesn't sound good," Rambert observed.

"No, it doesn't," Gray agreed, which was a first where the two of them were concerned.

But then, as he unconsciously mussed his hair back to the way it normally looked, one of the high windows of the mansion shattered, and a cascade of water from it followed, and Gray suddenly realized that Juvia was in fact bringing the fight to them.

Though he wasn't all that surprised, given the weather.

* * *

Giving a ferocious cry of vengeance, Juvia unleashed her Water Whip on Rosamunde without mercy or holding back, launching her attacks as though tearing at the very air with claws, her eyes white-hot with rage. It was so tempestuous that it actually threw Rosamunde off.

"HOW DARE YOU TRY TO HAVE ANYONE HURT MY GRAY?!"

But once she got her bearings, Rosamunde leapt backward, adopting an animalistic way of moving and grinning the way a stray dog would. And then she grew in size quite suddenly, her clothes bursting at the seams and falling away, her body growing in size, and then golden fur sprang up thick all over her body, as she bore the teeth of a wolf demon.

Which only served to spur Juvia on as she came at the wolf demon with a barrage of her Water Slicer. But though it nicked her opponent's snout, legs, and chest, the golden canine still came at her, opening wide her jaws. Quick on her feet nonetheless, Juvia dropped and slid forward, right underneath the leaping wolf. By the time the wolf landed, Juvia was already at the opposite end of the hallway, and, with the torrent of rain outside giving her strength, she launched another jet of water—boiling at the highest possible temperature without it turning to steam this time—that was powerful enough to crash through the window when the wolf demon ducked to avoid the scalding blow.

Then the wolf demon gave Juvia an almost mocking smile, as if to say, "Ha! You missed!"

Something which Juvia returned with a mocking smile of her own that said, "Did I?"

Before Rosamunde could react, Juvia, possessed of her fury and her desire to protect Gray, leapt forward rather ferally and actually managed to land on the wolf demon's back, grasping her by her golden fur and sitting astride her. Not keen on having someone ride on her back, the wolf demon planted her paws and tried to buck Juvia off, but Juvia hung on, yanking at Rosamunde's fur like reins on a horse. Even though this did nothing to bring the wolf demon under her control, it did force her to make a jump for the window in an attempt to throw Juvia from her back.

Just so, Juvia still managed to hang on, even as the wolf demon crashed to the ground below and hopped about wildly as she tried to fling her off. It was by the skin of her teeth that she hung on, now having to wrap her arms around the wolf demon's neck in order to do so, all while Rosamunde not only bucked, but snapped her massive jaws savagely, both of them getting drenched in the rain.

On the next clap of thunder and flash of lightning, Juvia risked loosening her grip and letting the wolf demon succeed now in throwing her off. And while in midair, she summoned another Water Lock and from above she imprisoned Rosamunde inside it the same way she did with that other wolf demon that Gray slew earlier. This worked to subdue Rosamunde, as she quickly succumbed to her deprivation of oxygen and passed out, at which point Juvia did the merciful thing and released her.

Thus Rosamunde the wolf demon finally collapsed to the muddy ground, limp and unconscious.

And though she managed this all while remaining up in the air, Juvia still had to contend with the fact that now she was about to crash back to the ground from a much greater height.

She really hadn't thought this entirely through at all.

Juvia gave a wild scream as she began to fall, the tails of the bedsheet wrapped around her trailing after her and whipping in the wind and the rain—

Only to be caught in someone's strong and capable arms.

Blinking open her eyes, Juvia saw that that someone was Gray, regarding her with an intense expression of concern, panting to catch his breath as though he'd had to run to get to her in time. Thankfully though, he actually appeared unharmed, despite the dire circumstances he'd appeared to be earlier.

Juvia smiled and gave a sigh of relief.

"You're okay," she gasped, in spite of herself, her heart fluttering in her chest.

At which Gray actually managed to relax and let out a laugh. " _I'm_ okay? Who's the one who nearly fell and broke their neck?"

Juvia blinked, and then they both acknowledged the fact that the sheet wrapped around her was doing little at the moment to cover her, particular where her breasts were concerned. Giving a squeal and blushing furiously, Juvia crossed her arms over her breasts in an attempt to make up for this, while Gray averted his eyes and set her back on her feet out of consideration for her modesty, as he too blushed furiously.

As Juvia straightened and adjusted the sheets around her to better cover herself again, she saw him regard the supine Rosamunde still in wolf demon form on the ground, his face shifting very quickly to a dark one that promised violence. Then he turned back to Juvia, looking ferociously serious.

"Your skin…what happened to it?" he rasped, reaching out and touching her still very silver arm.

Juvia shivered at the sight of him, how dangerous he was starting to look if she were being honest. Tentatively she opened her mouth, but it was someone else who answered.

"It's from the medicine I gave her," grunted Rambert, who seemed to have appeared out of nowhere, regarding Rosamunde himself, except in his case it was with a heartbreaking measure of pity.

"What medicine?" Gray demanded, turning on Rambert.

"The same medicine I gave to her to make her what she is." Rambert nodded to Rosamunde.

"You tried to give Juvia _that_?!" Gray whipped back around and stared at Juvia again, this time like he were scared. Though _of_ her or _for_ her, Juvia couldn't tell at first.

Still, she tried to smile. "It's all right, Gray. I'll be fine."

"She will," Rambert added, and it was then Juvia saw how beleaguered Rosamunde's butler was in the eyes, and she felt a twinge of sympathy for him. "I started to give her the antidote without Miss Rosamunde's knowledge. She won't turn. But she'll need another injection in order to completely cure her." He glanced between the both of them. "I shall go fetch that, if you will stay with her." He nodded to Rosamunde again.

"All right," Gray agreed, though he still had the shadow in his eyes. It actually scared Juvia a little.

She had a better idea of what was going on with Rambert though when he suddenly transformed into the bat-winged raven demon that she had seen Gray fighting earlier.

And with that, the raven demon flapped his enormous wings and launched himself into the air, taking advantage of the broken-open window to fly into the mansion on his way to retrieve the rest of the antidote for Juvia.

"Maybe he'll bring back my clothes too," she mused aloud, though mostly to try and lighten the dark mood that had befallen them.

Gray didn't seem to hear though as he knelt beside the still unconscious Rosamunde. "I saw her kin," he said without looking up.

"Kin?"

"The other wolf demons kept penned in the labyrinth. When I went in there, I saw one of them tearing into what looked like one of Rosamunde's dresses."

Juvia considered this. "How could that be?"

"Well, maybe it wasn't hers. Maybe it was some other girl," Gray supposed.

"It was a mistake."

Juvia and Gray turned and there stood Rambert, back already in his human guise, carrying a small case with him.

"A little girl from the village had wandered in there," Rambert went on, snapping open the case and handing over one of the syringes inside filled with a golden liquid, the same with which Juvia had been injected earlier. "That hole in the barrier not only lets wolf demons get out, but lets people get in, unawares. The wolf demon that attacked the little girl perhaps thought that it was finding Rosamunde another friend to play with. It's hard to tell with demons sometimes." Though he smiled, it was mirthless.

Juvia and Gray looked at each other, then watched Rambert used the antidote on Rosamunde. "She'll need more of this to turn her back entirely," he explained, "but I do think it's time that I…let her go."

"Where can she go from here though?" Juvia asked as Rambert also handed her clothes to her, having recovered them for her at last. "After she's killed people?"

Then Rosamunde's wolf demon eyes flew open, and she let out a small cry as her small body shook, the fur receding into her skin, shrinking as she slowly transformed back into Rosamunde the little girl. The moment she did though, she collapsed back, unconscious once more, and Rambert threw a sheet he was carrying over her to cover her up.

"She's still a child," Rambert insisted. "Please… _please_ don't kill her. Whatever she's done…it's my fault."

"Then allow me to slay the wolf demons prowling in the labyrinth," Gray offered as an alternative. "We'll spare her if you let me do that."

Rambert was hesitant at first, but relented at the glare Gray gave him.

And Juvia hid her soft look of appreciation for Gray's sense of mercy. It did something to ease the tension that at coiled in her stomach at that shadow flitting in his eyes a few moments earlier.

* * *

Gray's hands were steady as he injected the gold-colored antidote into the vein in Juvia's righthand inner arm, exposing it by having her pull her sleeve back. They'd gone into the mansion's parlor when they went back inside to get out of the rain, Rambert having carried little Rosamunde upstairs to look after her. Whatever he was, Gray actually found himself hesitant to cut him down as well. At least, he wanted to see what he planned to do next once he finished with the wolf demons before he made a final decision on that.

"Ouch," Juvia muttered on a reflex when the needle pierced her skin.

"Sorry," Gray whispered.

"It's fine," she said, trying to smile.

A gesture which tugged at a corner of Gray's mouth. That was so like her.

The two of them were sat together on the sofa by the large windows looking out over the rose garden. The sun was setting now behind the haze of gray clouds, the more softly falling rain catching the light creating a rosy mist. To Gray, it was a rather peaceful thing, and it made him look less forward to the grim and bloody task he still had ahead of him, which kind of surprised him actually.

"They say you can't choose your family," he commented, "and even though you and I know that to not be quite true, it didn't do Rosamunde good that someone tried to choose _for_ her as a means to save her."

"Well, Rambert _was_ a demon," Juvia pointed out.

She flinched again when Gray finished injecting her with the antidote and slid the needle back out of her skin. But it seemed to offer her some relief when Gray then ran the pad of his thumb over the still-silver skin and the bead of blood where he'd stuck her, covering the puncture with a very thin layer of cool ice.

"Thanks," she said quietly as she withdrew her hand from his.

"Sure." Gray flicked the empty syringe into lilac-patterned wastebasket and then stood. "Now, to take care of that labyrinth."

"Okay, just give me a minute."

"Actually, you should probably stay here."

This gave Juvia pause and she looked up at him, surprised. "What? Why?"

"This is a job for a Demon Slayer," Gray told her, avoiding her eyes. "And that's what I am. Not you."

"Gray," Juvia protested, sounding both angry and hurt.

Gray hated hearing her sound like that, so he dropped his hand on top of her head, giving her a pat as well as a kinder smile—or what he hoped was one, anyway. "It's fine. I won't be long."

Juvia sighed. "I guess I wouldn't be all that much help."

"It's not like that," Gray tried to tell her, but when she didn't answer, he sighed, wistful but uncertain of what else to say or do, so he withdrew his hand. "Like I said, won't be long," he promised her, and then went to step back outside into the glistering drizzle.

* * *

Juvia bit her lip as she watched Gray from the parlor window, still shirtless and tramping across the muddy lawns towards the labyrinth the purple of twilight pressed down upon the world, slowly devouring it like dark flames. Then she sighed and tried to think what to do next, only to feel a shivering itch all over her body. She looked down and to her intense relief, the silver color of her skin faded and was replaced once more by the pale flesh color that was her own.

She dropped back onto the sofa she was so relieved in fact. And then she heard a small sad sound that gave her pause, and she looked round to the doorway into the parlor and saw little Rosamunde, dressed in a little girl's robe and slippers, like an invalid child.

She regarded Juvia with brave yet sad eyes, and for a moment, Juvia felt she was seeing herself as a child, the way she would poke her head hopefully around corners and ask if she could join in whatever the other kids at the orphanage were doing, even if every time she was turned away for her gloomy, gloomy rain.

Then the impression was gone and Rosamunde cleared her throat and straightened up, acting more like the adult she'd been forced to act like since the death of her father.

"I…would like to apologize, for the awful things I've done, and the way I've acted," she began. "And…to thank you, and Mr. Fullbuster, for all of your help in this matter."

"Oh." Juvia smoothed her blue skirt and then folded her hands in her lap. "Not at all. I…I'm glad to see you seem to be…doing better."

"Yes, thank you." Rosamunde fidgeted a bit, once more acting more like a child. "I am." Then she put a small hand to her temple. "It's been so long since I've…really felt like me, you know?"

She shivered, and Juvia didn't wonder at it, considering the way Rosamunde had behaved when they had faced off earlier: like some evil mastermind—which she most certainly was not, not really.

"But…I'm grateful to Mr. Rambert," she went on. "He was there for me when I had no one else." Then she looked back up at Juvia and her eyes filled quite suddenly, and then she was crying openly, like the little girl who got caught doing something really bad and sincerely feels sorry about it. "Do you know…what that's like?"

Juvia frowned, remembering the way Phantom Lord had reached out to her when she'd had no one else in the world. "I do," she told her, unwavering in her sincerity.

"Okay." Anything else Rosamunde wanted to say was lost as she broke out into more quiet little sobs, overcome with the weight of everything she had done at such a tender age, wiping at her tearful eyes with the back of her small hands, and once again, Juvia saw herself as a child, crying alone because no one would play with her.

So she did for her what no one seemed able to do for her at that time.

She got up and knelt down to wrap her arms around the small trembling girl, holding her close, hugging her close. She felt Rosamunde's tears soak into her shoulder, into the fabric of her jacket as she continued to cry in her arms, her own eyes prickling hotly as she murmured into her ear that everything would be okay.

Because at the end of the day, Rosamunde had been a scared little girl who hadn't known quite what she'd been getting herself into—just like Juvia had once been.

* * *

As Gray cut through wolf demon after wolf demon beneath the soft light between sunset and moonrise—the twilight hour—tearing through one after the other with the Ice Demon Slayer Zerroth's Long Sword in bursts of bright red blood and clouds of ice, he yelled more and more wildly with every blow he struck. At the same time though, inside, he thought sadly about the possibility that his new power for demon slaying might actually start to pull him and Juvia apart, just when he'd been starting to feel closer to her than he'd ever felt to anyone in his life.

This was a concern that had been building for a while, and he still wasn't entirely sure about it, but after what he'd read in that book, the dark marks that had appeared on his skin when he'd fought Mard Geer Tartaros…if Juvia started to see that side of him, he couldn't let her worry about it, about him. He hated to think of her twisted up in painful knots inside because of something going with him.

Just the same, Gray lost himself in the slaughter. The rush of fur in shades of tawny, gray, black, and white, and then teeth, claws, the showers of scarlet around every corner as he wended and tore his way through the turning and twisting pathways of the labyrinth. Of course, the pack of wolf demons would not go quietly. They snarled at him, and in those snarls he could hear them demanding to know where Rosamunde was. It was a shame, because they sounded sincerely worried about their little lost pup.

But there were no words. Only the swing of the Zerroth's Long Sword, and then the final shot from the Zerroth's Destruction Bow at his final target: the russet alpha charging him the other end of the final passageway of hedge before reaching the center of the labyrinth.

His heart felt stone cold and heavy in his chest. It was different from the usual aloofness he'd always adopted in an attempt to come off as cool and unruffled and in complete control of himself. No, this was more like what he'd felt when his father held him in his arms before disappearing from his life again forever, only in this case it was also locked in a prison of winter. He simply struck, over and over, never flinching even when red demon blood flecked his chest and arms and face.

And when he finished, the tightness in his chest only intensified, and he had to take a moment to gasp for air and catch his breath. After which he looked up, having found himself in the center of the labyrinth after eliminating the alpha.

His heart caught in his throat.

Something of a nest of pilfered pillows and sheets had been put together underneath a nicely built lean-to made of wood, offering a roof of basic protection against the elements. In that nest of linens too, there were what looked like stuffed toys made to look like animals—like a rabbit, a raccoon, a cat even. Gray had no doubt that this was where Rosamunde came as a wolf demon when she needed to feel that comfort of a family, and here the wolf demons had indeed given her that, just like Rambert had hoped. No doubt they had played together here, taken naps, shared scraps of meat together, like a den of normal wolves would.

Rosamunde might've been overtaken by wicked impulses in being turned into a demon, but she must've been happy here too, happier than she'd been in so long. And even though it was his responsibility to take it away, he couldn't help but mourn for the loss regardless.

Yet…he managed not to get stuck in this morose mindset.

Because when he stepped back out of the labyrinth, his Ice Demon Slayer weaponry dissipated, his hair ruffled back to the way it normally looked, and still covered in demon blood, the rain had lifted, and there was Juvia, coming out to meet him underneath the silver moonlight, her skin already back to a healthy flesh color.

The two of them stopped short of each other, and then, without saying a word, she smiled softly for him and opened her arms. Overcome, even as he did his best to hold himself back, he walked gratefully into the embrace she offered and returned it.

Maybe this new power of his _wouldn't_ pull them apart after all. He certainly didn't want it to. He hoped it wouldn't. He _had_ to hope it.

Because in moments like these, he was finding out more and more that at the end of the day—of _every_ day, from every fight—Juvia would be the one to whom he most wanted to return.


End file.
